Thomas Cole Unbound: Biography of America’s Revered Landscape Painter

Born in England’s industrial northeast in 1801, artist Thomas Cole immigrated to America as a young man. Here, he found a country brimming with unchartered and untamed wilderness. His masterful handling of light, composition, and aerial perspective captured the sublime character of the American wilderness.
Cole had a keen eye and taught himself to paint by observing the works of other artists. In 1822, he began to work as a portraitist. One of his patrons, George Bruen, financed a summer trip for him to visit New York’s Hudson Valley in 1825. There, he painted five landscapes from scenes of the Catskill Mountains, Kaaterskill Falls, and Cold Spring (New York’s Hudson Highlands).
Author James Fenimore Cooper, poet William Cullen Bryant, and Cole are sometimes considered the fathers of the conservation movement. With the wilderness being a “fitting place to speak to God,” as Bryant wrote, they believed that nature was the manifestation of sublime providence. In their work, they described the American wilderness, once seen as limitless but now in need of conservation.
While traveling in Europe again in 1841, Cole painted a second series of “The Voyage of Life” and shipped the canvasses to New York. He returned to America in the summer of 1842 on Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s first ocean-going steamship: SS Great Western. The world was changing and new modes of transportation were shortening distances while urbanizing land. Cole was all too aware of the fragility of the natural wonders of American landscapes. His work and the work of his pupils, Frederic Church and Benjamin McConkey, brought renewed awareness of American wilderness—becoming part of the call for its conservation.