 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|||||
|
 |
 |
Biography of Thomas ColeName: Thomas ColeBirth Date: 1801 Death Date: 1848 Place of Birth: Bolton-le-Moors, Lancaster, England Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: painter, artist Thomas Cole Thomas Cole (1801-1848) was the founder of the Hudson River school of romantic American landscape painting. He treated the idyllic as well as the formidable aspects of nature in great detail and was also noted for his allegorical subjects.Thomas Cole was born in Bolton-le-Moors, Lancaster, England, and emigrated with his family to Philadelphia in 1818. They soon moved to Steubenville, Ohio, where Thomas, who had studied engraving briefly in England, taught art in his sister's school. He then tried to be an itinerant portrait painter. Seeking better patronage, he returned to Philadelphia in 1823 to paint landscapes and decorate Japan ware. He took drawing lessons at the Pennsylvania Academy and exhibited there for the first time in 1824.Moving to New York the following year Cole began to receive recognition and may at this time be said to have set in motion the taste for romantic landscape--a genre which would later become …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…He frequently placed a highly detailed tree at the right or left foreground (an inheritance from baroque stage settings), and the landscape beyond unfolds as on a stage. His was a highly romanticized version of nature often overlaid with elements of fantasy and sometimes even including medieval or classical ruins. Further Reading In the absence of a modern study of Cole, the best source is Louis Legrand Noble, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole (1853; edited, with an introduction, by Elliot Vesell, 1964); it includes correspondence and other documents. Howard S. Merritt, Thomas Cole (1969), an exhibition catalog, includes a critical introduction. For shorter notices see Frederick A. Sweet, The Hudson River School and the Early American Landscape Tradition (1945), and Esther Seaver, ed., Thomas Cole: One Hundred Years Later (1949).Baigell, Matthew, Thomas Cole, New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1981.Parry, Ellwood, The art of Thomas Cole: ambition and imagination, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988. |