Displaying items by tag: Thomas Cole

  Thomas Cole was the founder of The Hudson River School of painting – the mid-19th century American art movement of landscape paintings with an aesthetic vision influenced by romanticism.

The Thomas Cole Historic Site in Catskill, NY has a new exhibition entitled Master, Mentor, Master: Thomas Cole & Frederic Church which is on view now and will be until November 2nd 2014.

On March 1, 2014, “An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection of American Painting” will open at the Frick Art Museum at the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The exhibition features 50 paintings from the collection of Alabama businessman and philanthropist, Jack Warner. Warner, who is the former CEO of Gulf States Paper Corp., founded Alabama’s Tuscaloosa Museum of Art in 2011.

The exhibition, which spans the entire 19th century, includes works by Gilbert Stuart, Charles Peale Polk, Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Severin Roesen, William Merritt Chase, James McNeill Whistler, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, Maurice Prendergast, John Henry Twachtman, and Mary Cassatt. The comprehensive show tracks the evolution of painting in the United States from early American portraiture to the romantic paintings of the Hudson River School and the rise of American Impressionism during the tail-end of the century.

“An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection of American Painting,” which was organized by the Warner Foundation, will remain on view at the Frick Art Museum through May 25, 2014.

The Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute’s Museum of Art in Utica, New York is sending a collection of Thomas Cole paintings on an 18-month tour to four major art museums. “The Voyage of Life,” a series of four allegorical paintings depicting the different stages of life including “Childhood,” “Youth,” “Manhood,” and “Old Age,” will go to the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, the Saint Louis Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Dickson Gallery & Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee. The works will remain at the MWPAI until March 2, 2014.

Cole, the English-born American artist who founded the Hudson River School, was commissioned to paint “The Voyage of Life” by banker Samuel Ward between 1839 and 1840. When Ward passed away, Cole argued with Ward’s heirs over who had custody of the art. Ultimately, the heirs won and Cole painted another version of “The Voyage of Life” for himself. Cole’s second rendition of the series resides in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The MWPAI is producing a catalog to tour with the collection, which will include essays and notes as well as never-before-published material and research about the paintings.

The National Academy Museum in New York presents William Trost Richards: Visions of Land and Sea. The exhibition features approximately 60 works by the 19^th century painter from the museum’s permanent collection. The National Academy houses a significant collection of Richards’ works thanks to the estate of the artist’s daughter, Anna Richards Brewster, which bequeathed over 100 works spanning Richards’ career to the museum in 1954.

William Trost Richards, a native of Philadelphia, was an American landscape painter associated with the Hudson River School as well as the American Pre-Raphaelite movement. Richards studied intermittently with the German-born landscape painter Paul Weber in the 1850s and greatly admired the works of Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church and the English Pre-Raphaelites. Richards is best known for his landscapes and marine paintings of Rhode Island, the White Mountains and the shorelines of Great Britain, France and Norway.

William Trost Richards: Visions of Land and Sea will be on view at the National Academy Museum through September 8, 2013.

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art In New York City announced that one million people have visited the institution’s New Galleries for American Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts since opening to the public on January 6, 2012. The galleries, which were expanded, reconceived, and reinstalled, average 2,000 visitors per day -- about 11% of the Met’s overall attendance.

The New Galleries present works ranging from the 18^th century through the early 20^th century arranged in chronological order. Highlights from the New Galleries include Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware and works by American masters such as John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, and Frederic Remington.

The renovation of the Met’s New Galleries was part of a comprehensive, decade-long project to redesign the museum’s entire American Wing. The overhaul added 3,300 square feet of gallery space to the American Wing and allowed for a more in-depth presentation of the Met’s remarkable American art collection. Nearly all of the American Wing’s 17,000 holdings are now on view. 

The Fenimore Museum of Art in Cooperstown, NY is currently hosting the exhibition Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision. The show presents a number of important works by key figures in the movement including Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Thomas Cole (1801-1848), Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Jasper F. Cropsey (1823-1900) and Asher Durand (1796-1886). Nature and the American Vision was organized by the New-York Historical Society and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts.

The exhibition aims to communicate the Hudson River School artists’ fascination with the American landscape. The mid-19^th century movement was influenced by romanticism and is defined by its paintings that celebrate nature’s sublimity and exude an almost ethereal quality. Many Hudson River School painters regarded nature as an indefinable manifestation of God, which strongly influenced the movement’s aesthetic qualities.

Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision will be on view at the Fenimore Museum of Art through September 29, 2013. The Fenimore, which is operated by the New York State Historical Association, specializes in American Folk Art, Indian art and artifacts, 19^th century genre painting and American photography.

The Hudson River School Art Trail will open for the season on June 22, 2013.The trail boasts guided hikes, which are organized by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York and take visitors on a tour of the vistas, mountains and valleys that influenced the Hudson River School painters including Thomas Cole (1801-1848), Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), Asher B. Durand (1796-1886), Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900), and Sanford Gifford (1823-1880).

The Hudson River School Art Trail is divided into a number of large geographic areas and allows visitors to walk in the footsteps of some of the most significant artists of the 19^th century. The Hudson River School was the first major art movement to sweep America and it dominated the visual arts for over 50 years. The trail includes the home of Thomas Cole who is credited with founding the Hudson River School; Olana, the home of Frederic Edwin Church, an important figure in the movement; and views of the landscapes that are featured in the artists’ paintings.

The Hudson River School Art Trail was expanded last year, more than doubling its size from its original 8 sites in New York to 20 sites in New York, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

In February 2013, the Fred L. Emerson Foundation and the Seward House Museum in Auburn, New York announced that they would sell a significant painting by the English-born American artist and founder of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole (1801-1848). The sale of the work, titled Portage Falls on the Genesee (1839) is intended to benefit the institution, which opened to the public in 1955 and became a registered National Historic Landmark in 1964.

Portage Falls was given to the American politician William H. Seward while he was the governor of New York prior to the Civil War. Seward went on to serve as Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson and was a dominant figure in the Republican Party during its formative years. After his death in the 1950s, his home and its contents, which included 15,000 items including books, furniture, and works of art, were donated to the Fred L. Emerson Foundation. The Foundation opened the Seward Museum in 1951 and it became a fully independent, not-for-profit institution in 2009; the Cole painting was retained by the foundation.

The work, which depicts what is now Letchworth State Park in western New York, has been on view at the Seward Museum for 170 years and not everyone is pleased with the Foundation’s decision to sell it. A group known as the Seward Legacy Preservation, which formed in April 2013, includes descendants of Seward, and is poised to fight to restore the painting to its former place in the Seward House.

Seward’s great-great-grandson, Ray Messenger, also voiced his opposition to the sale. Although he served as the president of the Seward House’s board until 2009, Messenger was shocked by the decision. On Tuesday, May 7, 2013, Messenger asked a judge to make him the administrator of Seward’s estate, the initial step in filing a lawsuit to block the sale.

Portage Falls, which measures roughly 7 feet by 5 feet, was said to be worth around $20 million dollars in 2007. If the painting is sold, the Foundation and the Seward Museum plan on splitting the profit. The painting is currently being kept in a secure storage location.

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY is currently hosting the exhibition Albert Bierstadt in New York & New England. Guest curated by Anne Blaugrund, former director of National Academy Museum in New York, the exhibition features a wide selection of Albert Bierstadt’s (1830-1902) east coast paintings.

Bierstadt (1830-1902) a German-American painter best known for his lush landscapes of the American west, also spent time capturing the natural beauty of the White Mountains, the Hudson Valley, and New England in his work. All of the works on view were created between the late 1850s and 1880s and range from oil sketches to finished paintings. Albert Bierstadt in New York & New England is the 10^th annual presentation of 19^th century landscape paintings at the Thomas Cole site.

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site, which is also known as Cedar Grove, is comprised of the home and studios of Thomas Cole (1801-1848), the founder of the Hudson River School of painting. A National Historic Landmark, the site aims to communicate Cole’s profound influence on American art to a broader modern audience.

Albert Bierstadt in New York & New England is on view through November 3, 2013.

The Panoramic View: The Hudson and the Thames, which is currently on view at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY, focuses on the panoramic vista, a form that became popular among artists in the late 18^th century. The term panorama was originally coined by the Irish painter Robert Barker (1739-1806) to describe his wide-angle paintings of Edinburgh and London. The form was ideal for members of the Hudson River School and other artists entranced by the natural world as it allowed them to capture the sweeping grandeur of the landscapes that inspired them.

The Panoramic View includes works by Robert Havell, Jr. (1793-1878), an English artist who emigrated from London to New York and painted both the Hudson and the Thames; founder of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole (1801-1848); and Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900), a first-generation member of the Hudson River School. The exhibition features loans from galleries, private collections, and museums including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The New-York Historical Society.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies The Panoramic River, which is on view through May 19, 2013.