course of empires

Thomas Cole: A Transatlantic Look at America’s Greatest Landscape Painter

Sandra Bertrand

The Oxbow, The Connecticut River near Northampton (1836) is one of the central masterpieces of this exhibit, once again addressing nature untamed with the inevitable advent of civilization. A darkly vulnerable landscape is played out against the order of agriculture, with crops growing in the calm of a sun-stroked sky. It’s a gorgeous composition, the eye traversing the snaking river throughout.

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