H. Daniel Peck

In 1825 the artist Thomas Cole visited the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains. Within a few years, he had set up a studio in Catskill and married a local woman. By 1836 he wrote in his journal that it's "quietness & solitude is gone."

It was his Catskill paintings that led to his discovery by John Trumbull, who brought his work to the attention of the New York City art world, propelling him to fame. He was inspired by the Catskills, even painting his favorite scene from memory while show more studying abroad.

Thomas Cole's Refrain by H. Daniel Peck considers the Cole's Catskill Creek paintings, probing deep into the subtleties Cole hid in plain sight--images of the human relationship to nature, the tension between civilization and nature, and the human experience as we journey through life.

Thomas Cole always intrigued me because of his use of art to convey his vision of life in his painting series The Course of Civilization and The Voyage of Life. I was interested in this book as an exploration of Cole's vision through the landscape he painted over and over, the application of his "deeply literary imagination" to create a narrative in his art.

Viewers may puzzle over just how different each version of the Catskill Creek is from another. He painted one scene ten times! The creek and the trees and the misty mountains on the horizon are seen in various lights, time of day, and seasons. There is often a man rowing and human and animal figures, sometimes barely seen. Peck zeros in on the details, looking for themes and interpreting Cole's intentions.

The paintings are reproduced in whole and in detail. There are fascinating maps showing Cole's vantage point from which he sketched.

Readers learn about Cole's theories, his Essay on American Art as it applies to his art, his career and personal life, and his travels across America and Europe.

From the vantage point of a time when we are under threat of climate change and in the throes of the struggle between industry and business and environmental protection, even our national parks unprotected from commerce, it might surprise that two centuries ago Cole was already mourning the loss of America's pristine natural abundance.

Born in Lancashire, England, a hotbed of textile mills, Cole understood America's future under the relentless industrial growth powered by capitalistic greed. Cole's art reacted to the changing American landscape under the Industrial Revolution. He deeply felt men's "insensibility" to the sublime "beauty of nature," which "commerce" was destroying. Forests were cut down, Native American burial grounds desiccated, and train tracks altered pastoral scenes and rattled the foundations of early colonial homes.

In some of the paintings, dark storms are rushing toward the sun-filled scenes, only stumps remain of once splendid primal trees, and vultures hover.

Wild nature, the agrarian life, and industry's impending alteration are part of the cycle of civilization. But not all "civilization" is welcome. Case in point: Niagara Falls, my girlhood Sunday afternoon jaunt--oh, to have seen it before the forest was torn down and the cement and shops grew to the very water's edge!

Cole was one of the first American artists to portray the American landscape, inspiring and influencing the artists of the Hudson River School and Luminists such as his student Frederick Church. I enjoyed this deeper look into Cole's art.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. show less