Thomas Cole

Happy Birthday Thomas Cole!! American landscape painter, born 1801, Cole came from England as a child, settling with his parents on the Ohio frontier. He was the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement who lived in and painted this area of our country. Cole was a self taught, wandering artist. His paintings had a mystical twist as evidenced in his The Voyage of Life, a series of panels on the theme. He paints in great detail, still managing to portray a huge sense of space.

Hudson River School-Landscape painters of the Hudson River Valley, where humans and nature coexist in harmony. This group was heavily influenced by Romanticism. Their paintings depicted three themes: discovery, exploration and settlement. They shared a reverence for America’s beauty, relating to writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau.