Friday, February 16, 2018

'Picturesque and Sublime: Thomas Cole’s Trans-Atlantic Inheritance'


Thomas Cole, The Clove, Catskills, Oil on canvas, 1827, 25 ¼ x 35 1/8 in.  New Britain Museum of American Art.  Charles F.  Smith Fund, 1945.22.
Thomas Cole, The Clove, Catskills, Oil on canvas, 1827, 25 ¼ x 35 1/8 in. New Britain Museum of American Art. Charles F. Smith Fund, 1945.22.

Picturesque and Sublime will present masterworks on paper by major British artists, including Turner and Constable, together with significant oil-on-canvas paintings by Thomas Cole to demonstrate Cole’s radical achievement of transforming the well-developed British traditions of landscape representations into a new bold formulation, the American Sublime.




Thomas Cole, Button Wood Tree, Ink on paper, 13 1/2″ x 16 7/8″, The Albany Institute of History & Art, Gift of Mrs. Florence Cole Vincent, 1958.28.36.

Catalogue


 

April 17, 2018
192 pages, 9 x 11
120 color illus.
ISBN: 9780300233537
PB-with Flaps


 


The authors here explore the role of prints as agents of artistic transmission and look closely at how Cole’s own creative process was driven by works on paper such as drawings, notebooks, letters, and manuscripts. Also considered is the importance of the parallel works of William Guy Wall, best known for his pioneering Hudson River Portfolio. Beautifully illustrated with works on paper ranging from watercolors to etchings, mezzotints, aquatints, engravings, and lithographs, as well as notable paintings, this book offers important insights into Cole’s formulation of a profound new category in art—the American sublime.
Tim Barringer is Paul Mellon Professor in the History of Art at Yale University. Gillian Forrester is senior curator of historic fine art at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Jennifer Raab is assistant professor in the history of art at Yale University. Sophie Lynford and Nicholas Robbins are doctoral candidates in the history of art at Yale University.