THOMAS COLE

Albany is fortunate to have the bulk of Thomas Cole's papers in the New York State Archive, with additional material in the extraordinary Hudson River School collection at the Albany Institute of History and Art. There, Thomas Cole's encounter with the American wilderness first captivated me.

Our notions of the Anglo-American artist Thomas Cole—and his sanctified regional reputation—have become so rooted to the historical memory of the Hudson River valley that his presence seems to hover above its landscape still, as if his spirit may yet materialize above Kaaterskill High Peak in the ethereal manner of one his painterly allegories. Yet, nationally, if Andrew Jackson represents the eponymous American political figure of his time, Thomas Cole stands as a correspondingly significant figure in the art of the Early Republic and Antebellum period.

Cole is remembered both as the founder of the “Hudson River School” and, in Robert Hughes’ terms, as “the first boy wonder of American painting.” Just as the last generation of historians have overturned Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s progressive paean to Jackson, Cole’s life and works need to be reinterpreted in a manner accordant with new understandings of the Jacksonian Era. Art historians, by insisting on revisionist theories that sustain Schlesinger’s interpretations of Jackson’s opposition, have projected a persistent misidentification of Cole’s political viewpoint onto his canvasses, with tragic consequences for understanding his art.

Once the political lens is corrected through an understanding of the complexities of New York politics, a re-envisioned Thomas Cole provides the vital opportunity to illuminate Transatlantic cultural and environmental history. Along the way, Cole’s courtships and marriage reveal aspects of gender relations in Knickerbocker society and expose the dilemmas of his youthful proto-Bohemianism in an increasingly material age. Through case studies of his wilderness journeys, Cole’s story explores the intersection of Republican ideology, Romantic aesthetics, and the evolving argument for nature’s essential spiritual and physical sovereignty in crafting the best hope for an enlightened democratic society.