This fascinating look at artist Thomas Cole's life takes readers from his humble beginnings to his development of a new painting style that became America's first formal art movement: the Hudson River school of painting. Thomas Cole was always looking for something new to draw. Born in England during the Industrial Revolution, he was fascinated by tales of the American countryside, and was ecstatic to move there in 1818. The life of an artist was difficult at first, however Thomas kept his dream alive by drawing constantly and seeking out other artists. But everything changed for him when he was given a ticket for a boat trip up the Hudson River to see the wilderness of the Catskill Mountains. The haunting beauty of the landscape sparked his imagination and would inspire him for the rest of his life. The majestic paintings that followed struck a chord with the public and drew other artists to follow in his footsteps, in the first art movement born in America. His landscape paintings also started a conversation on how to protect the country's wild beauty. Hudson Talbott takes readers on a unique journey as he depicts the immigrant artist falling in love with--and fighting to preserve--his new country.

The Hudson River has been a source of inspiration and a means of livelihood to all who have lived along its shores. It played a key role in the settling of the New World and the outcome of the Revolutionary War, and was the birthplace of the environmental movement. Now Hudson Talbott pays homage to the river that shares his name in a gorgeously illustrated, fascinating account of the river?s history. Each appealing spread sheds exciting light on the river?s strategic, economic and cultural signifi cance. Packed with facts, timelines and maps, this is a wonderful introduction to a wide range of topics including the Age of Exploration, the Erie Canal, the Industrial Age, American arts and literature and the environment. River of Dreams is truly a book with something for everyone.

This multidisciplinary book offers the first broad ecocritical review of American art and examines the environmental contexts of artistic practice from the colonial period to the present day. Tracing how visions of the environment have changed from the Native-European encounter to the emergence of modern ecological activism, more than a dozen scholars and practitioners discuss how artists have both responded to and actively instigated changes in ecological understanding.

"Shows how Thomas Cole's neglected Catskill Creek paintings cohere as a series and express the artist's deep attachment to place and region"--

Collects the best artwork created before, during and following the Civil War, in the years between 1859 and 1876, along with extensive quotations from men and women alive during the war years and text by literary figures, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. 15,000 first printing.

A breathtaking selection of works from the largest and finest collection of Hudson River paintings in the world Hudson River School paintings are among America's most admired and well-loved artworks. Such artists as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt left a powerful legacy to American art, embodying in their epic works the reverence for nature and the national idealism that prevailed during the middle of the nineteenth century. This book features fifty-seven major Hudson River School paintings from the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, recognized as the most extensive and finest in the world. Gorgeously and amply illustrated, the book includes paintings by all the major figures of the Hudson River School. Each work is beautifully reproduced in full color and is accompanied by a concise description of its significance and historical background. The book also includes artists' biographies and a brief introduction to American nineteenth-century landscape painting and the Wadsworth Atheneum's unique role in collecting Hudson River pictures.

Thomas Cole (1801–1848) is celebrated as the greatest American landscape artist of his generation. Though previous scholarship has emphasized the American aspects of his formation and identity, never before has the British-born artist been presented as an international figure, in direct dialogue with the major landscape painters of the age. Thomas Cole’s Journey emphasizes the artist’s travels in England and Italy from 1829 to 1832 and his crucial interactions with such painters as Turner and Constable. For the first time, it explores the artist’s most renowned paintings, The Oxbow (1836) and The Course of Empire cycle (1834–36), as the culmination of his European experiences and of his abiding passion for the American wilderness. The four essays in this lavishly illustrated catalogue examine how Cole’s first-hand knowledge of the British industrial revolution and his study of the Roman Empire positioned him to create works that offer a distinctive, even dissident, response to the economic and political rise of the United States, the ecological and economic changes then underway, and the dangers that faced the young nation. A detailed chronology of Cole’s life, focusing on his European tour, retraces the artist’s travels as documented in his journals, letters, and sketchbooks, providing new insight into his encounters and observations. With discussions of over seventy works by Cole, as well as by the artists he admired and influenced, this book allows us to view his work in relation to his European antecedents and competitors, demonstrating his major contribution to the history of Western art.

Catalogue of a touring exhibition held at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, June 20-September 20, 2015; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, November 7, 2015-January 18, 2016; and Pinacoteca do Estado de Saao Paulo, Saao Paulo, February 27-May 29, 2016.

American Art to 1900 presents an astonishing variety of unknown, little-known, or undervalued documents to convey the story of American art through the many voices of its contemporary practitioners, consumers, and commentators. The volume highlights such critically important themes as women artists, African American representation and expression, regional and itinerant artists, Native Americans and the frontier, and more. With its hundreds of explanatory headnotes, this book reveals the documentary riches of American art and its many intersecting histories. -back cover.