Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire

Interesting exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the life and work of Thomas Cole, the American landscape painter.

 
Although born in Britain in 1801 Cole emigrated to America in 1818. He began his career engraving printing blocks in the cotton mills of Bolton. He did revisit Britain and Italy and was inspired by the Claude, Turners and Constable in the National Gallery. He visited Turner in his studio plus rented a studio that had been used by Claude in Rome.

Once in America he painted wilderness landscapes devoid of settlement and incorporated religious and literary themes. In his Hudson River Portfolio of prints he introduced the American public to the idea of the picturesque landscape. In his later career he wrote an essay on American scenery, a manifesto for American landscape painting and established the Hudson River School of landscape painting. His large painting Oxbow shown here was his visual version of that essay. The picture combines wild and cultivated landscape.


 
However most interesting was his Rise and Fall of Civilisation series. These feature am imagined landscape with the same distinctive mountain which follow different times of the day and trace human progress from the primitive thought urbanisation to self-destruction. They show a real understanding of the land and how it can be influences by man. Was it wrong of me to like the decadent city one best?
 
Closes on 7 October 2018
 
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