The big snow storm seems to have missed us entirely, so work continues on our landscape restoration. Here's a picture you don't see every day: giant construction equipment on Thomas Cole's front lawn. The truck in this photo is scooping out a roadway where the original entrance drive once curved through the property. The roadway will be a finished in gravel, as will all the other new paths throughout the historic site.]]>
I thought the High Line was a prominent location (see blog entry below), but it seems that Thomas Cole has moved to the high-rent district. In a partnership with the New-York Historical Society, Thomas Cole paintings are currently adorning a fall fashion display in the windows of Saks 5th Avenue in New York City. Click here to link to a blog about it.]]>
I love it when contemporary artists reference Hudson River School painting in their work, however obliquely. This reference is anything but subtle, and its placement is highly visible. The artist Valerie Hegarty is using a Jasper Cropsey painting in her installation to be installed tomorrow on the High Line, the elevated park built on an old rail corridor along the Hudson River in New York City. The painting, owned by the National Gallery of Art, is famous for having caused the British to question Cropsey on his wild fall foliage colors, as they had never seen such a spectacle themselves. Click here for more information about the project. Shown at right is a digital rendering."Cole was my first serious work. All my earliest research was centered on him. He's an extraordinary figure."
"Working on Cole is always an illuminating experience. He's one of the most intellectually stimulating artists of the Hudson River School. He's never left me, though he precipitated my work in American art as long ago as the l950's."
"This is fun for me. It brings everything full circle to come back to the Cole House".
Dr. Novak is speaking at 2pm this Sunday. Don't miss it.
]]>We took an all-day hike with the article's author Ben Genocchio last week, and luckily his good humor and enthusiasm were not dampened by getting caught in a rain shower on our return from site #7, Sunset Rock, nor from getting a bit lost along the way. Enjoy the article, and enjoy the fall colors out there on the Hudson River School Art Trail before the leaves all fall to the ground.
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Very exciting development! (at least for us Thomas Cole and/or architecture finatics): the architect (the accomplished and wonderful Marilyn Kaplan) whom we hired to do the inital research on Thomas Cole's "New Studio", which stood here on the property from 1846 until 1973, has produced some initial drawings showing what the building actually looked like. At right is the west elevation, which would have faced Spring Street. How great is it to see this building rise from the ashes, at least on paper! Thomas Cole designed the building himself, and it served as his studio from 1846 until he died in 1848. It was a truly beautiful building, with italianate styling and whimsical details such as wooden acorns adorning the corners. These drawings are the first step in our process to bring the building back, in the exact footprint of the original (which was just across the lawn from the Main House.) Stay tuned for more progress on this front.]]>In other news, starting this month we are getting free advertisements on WMHT, the PBS television station out of Albany. The National Parks in the area got together last winter to plan a partnership around the upcoming Ken Burns series about the National Parks called “America’s Best Idea.” The TV station decided to produce 1-minute pieces about each of our sites, and to broadcast them once per week for the 26 weeks leading up to the Ken Burns broadcast in the fall (September 27th). You can see the ad on a recent post on this blog.
I also spoke this week with Edith Cole Silberstein (Thomas Cole's great granddaughter), who told me that she had received letters from Raymond Beecher (the late Greene County Historian) every two weeks for the last fifteen years! The letters tell all the details of what was happening at the Thomas Cole house from 1994 until Ray died last fall, and the pile of letters weighs nearly seven pounds. (She actually weighed the letters.) wow.
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