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View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm, commonly known as The Oxbow, is a seminal American landscape painting by Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School. The 1836 painting depicts a Romantic panorama of the Connecticut River Valley just after a thunderstorm.
Cole's unequivocal construction and composition of the scene, charged with moral significance, is reinforced by his depiction of himself in the middle distance, perched on a promontory painting the Oxbow. He is an American producing American art, in communion with American scenery.
During the nineteenth century, discussions of westward expansion dominated political discourse. The Louisiana Purchase of 1804 essentially doubled the size of the United States, and many believed that it was a divinely ordained obligation of Americans to settle this westward territory. In The Oxbow, Cole visually shows the benefits of this ...
6 kwi 2022 · Considered the first proto-environmental artist in the United States, Cole challenged American citizens to question the rapid destruction of wilderness lands in The Oxbow. Cole’s view from the top of Mount Holyoke looking southwest to the Oxbow is regarded as one of his greatest accomplishments.
In The Oxbow, the self-portrait of the artist at work at his easel is a significant detail. In fact, Cole was one of the first American artists to execute oil sketches in the field. This detail shows Cole's apparent commitment to the empirical study of nature, emphasizing his method of painting en plein air.
The Oxbow is an oil on canvas painting and was created by Cole in 1836. It depicts a bend in the Connecticut River, the central axis which divides the paintings into two distinct sides similar to the way Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is divided.
Thomas Cole American. 1836. On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 759. Cole inspired many of his colleagues, including his most important student, Frederic Edwin Church, to take up plein-air painting or sketching in pencil or oils.
