"biography":"Thomas Cole inspired the generation of American [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/paintings-by-genre/landscape]landscape[/url] painters that came to be known as the [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/artists-by-painting-school/hudson-river-school]Hudson River School[/url]. Born in Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, England, in 1801, at the age of seventeen he emigrated with his family to the United States, first working as a wood engraver in Philadelphia before going to Steubenville, Ohio, where his father had established a wallpaper manufacturing business. \n\nCole received rudimentary instruction from an itinerant artist, began painting portraits, genre scenes, and a few landscapes, and set out to seek his fortune through Ohio and Pennsylvania. He soon moved on to Philadelphia to pursue his art, inspired by paintings he saw at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Moving to New York City in spring 1825, Cole made a trip up the Hudson River to the eastern Catskill Mountains. Based on his sketches there, he executed three landscapes that a city bookseller agreed to display in his window. Colonel [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/john-trumbull]John Trumbull[/url], already renowned as the painter of the American Revolution, saw Cole’s pictures and instantly purchased one, recommending the other two to his colleagues William Dunlap and [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/asher-brown-durand]Asher B. Durand[/url]. \n\nWhat Trumbull recognized in the work of the young painter was the perception of wildness inherent in American scenery that landscape artists had theretofore ignored. Trumbull brought Cole to the attention of various patrons, who began eagerly buying his work. Dunlap publicized the discovery of the new talent, and Cole was welcomed into New York’s cultural community, which included the poet and editor William Cullen Bryant and the author James Fenimore Cooper. Cole became one of the founding members of the National Academy of Design in 1825. Even as Cole expanded his travels and subjects to include scenes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, he aspired to what he termed a “higher style of a landscape” that included narrative—some of the paintings in paired series—including biblical and literary subjects, such as Cooper’s popular [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/thomas-cole/scene-from-the-last-of-the-mohicans-by-james-fenimore-cooper-1827][i]Last of the Mohicans[/i][/url]. \n\nBy 1829, his success enabled him to take the Grand Tour of Europe and especially Italy, where he remained in 1831–32, visiting Florence, Rome, and Naples. Thereafter he painted many Italian subjects, like [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/thomas-cole/a-view-near-tivoli-morning-1832][i]View near Tivoli. Morning[/i][/url] (1832). The region around Rome, along with the classical myth, also inspired [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/thomas-cole/the-titan-s-goblet-1833][i]The Titan’s Goblet[/i][/url] (1833). Cole’s travels and the encouragement and patronage of the New York merchant Luman Reed culminated in his most ambitious historical landscape series, [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/thomas-cole/all-works#!#filterName:Series_the-course-of-empire,resultType:masonry][i]The Course of Empire[/i][/url] (1833–1836), five pictures dramatizing the rise and fall of an ancient classical state. \n\nCole also continued to paint, with ever-rising technical assurance, sublime American scenes such as the [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/thomas-cole/view-from-mount-holyoke-1836][i]View from Mount Holyoke[/i][/url] (1836), [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/thomas-cole/the-oxbow-the-connecticut-river-near-northampton-1836][i]The Oxbow[/i][/url] (1836), in which he included a portrait of himself painting the vista and [url href=https://www.wikiart.org/en/thomas-cole/view-on-the-catskill-early-autunm-1837][i]View on the Catskill—Early Autumn[/i][/url] (1836-1837), in which he pastorally interpreted the prospect of his beloved Catskill Mountains from the village of Catskill, w
