View of Fort Putnam is an 1825 oil on canvas painting of the Hudson River with a view of Fort Putnam by British-American painter Thomas Cole, who founded the Hudson River School. It is currently owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.[1][2]

View of Fort Putnam
Artist	Thomas Cole
Year	1825
Medium	Oil on Canvas
Dimensions	69.2 cm × 86.4 cm (27.2 in × 34.0 in)
Location	Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Artist's Background

Tom Christopher wrote that “[Thomas] Cole’s greatest artistic asset proved to be his untutored eye.”[3] Cole emigrated to America with his family in the spring of 1819 at the age of eighteen.[4] As a child, his surroundings were of Lancashire, England, an area known to be an epicenter of Britain’s primarily industrial region. Because of this, Cole was granted an additional clarity of and sensitivity to the vibrancy of American landscapes awash with color, a stark contrast to the bleak and subdued landscapes of the country he left behind.[5]

References

Works cited

• Christopher, Tom. "Living Off the Landscape: How Thomas Cole and Frederick Church made Themselves at Home in the Hudson River Valley." Humanities 30, no. 4 (2009):6-11.
• Christopher, Tom (July 2009). "Living Off the Landscape". Humanities. National Endowment for the Humanities. 30 (4). ISSN 0018-7526. Retrieved 2020-09-16.
• Noble, Luis Legrand. The Life and Works of Thomas Cole. Edited by Elliot S. Vesell Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964.
• Great Northern Catskills of Greene County. “Hudson River School of Art”. http://www.greatnortherncatskills.com/arts-culture/hudson-river-school-art.

External links

• Explore Thomas Cole provided by the National Park Service