Study for Catskill Creek c. 1844 - 1845

Thomas Cole made this oil on canvas, ‘Study for Catskill Creek’ likely in the 1830s. Cole, an English-born American artist, founded the Hudson River School, a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by its landscape paintings. This work has a vital place in the history of American cultural identity. As the United States expanded westward, images of unspoiled wilderness acquired a powerful symbolic value. The aesthetic appreciation of nature provided a powerful rhetoric for conceiving of America as exceptional. Cole was politically active and concerned about the impact of industrialization on the American landscape, which is a common theme in his work. Art historians can research this and the broader context of the Hudson River school by consulting period newspapers and magazines, exhibition reviews, and the letters and diaries of artists and patrons. The significance of art often lies in its relationship to the cultural and institutional context in which it was produced.