9781422276457

THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL

Even if James Fenimore Cooper, in his 1823 novel The Pioneers , gave his frontier hero Natty Bumppo the capability to exult in America’s scenery— an enthusiasm that surpassed mere love of the great outdoors—there were technical and intellectual influences that were not to be found among rough-and-ready frontier explorers and settlers. Like many American artists after him, Cole would have to borrow vitally important tradition from an older world in order to translate into substantive works of art the natural world that a new and impatient civilization was settling. Cole noted the paradox of the American artist’s unique position of being able to catalogue an unfolding panorama of awe-inspiring natural phenom- ena in a virginal land while having little history or lore with which to estab- lish a symbolic foundation. In his often brooding “Essay on American Scenery” (1835), he faced the American landscape’s lack of an aesthetic past and apparently limited thematic resources, tersely arguing: “But American

The Clove, Catskills T homas C ole . c. 1827; oil on canvas; 25 x 33 in. (64 x 84 cm). New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut. Charles F. Smith Fund. In this example of his early studies of the Catskills, Cole has used a favorite composition in which downward angles of tree-covered mountains form the v-shape of the ravine. The slope in the foreground is in shadow, while sunlight falls on the ravine. Rock formations and a crooked tree introduce the view, while gray clouds sweep the sky.

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