Thomas Cole

Thomas Cole (1801-1848), American painter, born in Bolton, Lancashire, England. He began his artistic career as a wood engraver. In 1819 he emigrated to the United States with his parents and continued working as an engraver. In 1823 he began studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and painting landscapes. Two years later he moved to Catskill, New York State, on the Hudson River. He soon gained recognition for his allegorical and romanticized landscapes, which are generally considered to be the first important American landscape paintings. Because of his fame, he attracted a group of American landscape artists that became known as the Hudson River School. Cole is best known for The Oxbow (1836) and In the Catskills (1837), both in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a series of five allegorical canvases, The Course of Empire (1836, New York Historical Society, New York).