Landscape Blog

Thomas Cole at the Louvre

Executive Director — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:35:42 +0000

Going to Paris anyone? Opening on January 14th is a one-room exhibition of Thomas Cole paintings at the Louvre! And we are hosting a speaker here who is traveling all the way from Paris to tell us about it! The exhibition kicks off a four-year collaboration between the musée du Louvre, the High Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Wouldn't Thomas Cole be pleased! In a nearby auditorium, the Louvre will be showing our own Thomas Cole film in a continuous loop - complete with French subtitles. (If you'd like to see our film in English, click here.) Come and hear more about it on March 11th when Dr. Katherine Bourguignon, associate curator from the Terra Foundation for American Art Europe, travels all the way from Paris, France, to speak. Also, click here for a short article about the exhibition.

A Wedding Night

Executive Director — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:40:37 +0000

Maria Bartow, played by Brigitte Choura, getting readyExactly 175 years ago today, 35-year-old Thomas Cole married 24-year-old Maria Bartow in the Main House of what we now call the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. Last Saturday we had a little fun with this anniversary and created a light-hearted re-enactment of the event with three professional actors, a three-tiered wedding cake from an 1833 recipe, and a keg of locally brewed beer. Maria's actual 1836 white silk wedding dress was on display for that one night only, so we Cotten family with dress-up propssituated it next to Thomas Cole's original top hat in order to create a little reunion of sorts. Guests were supplied with their own top hats and other flourishes for a photo-shoot, and copies of the hand-written 1836 wedding certificate were given out as party favors. More photos, including one of Maria's 1836 wedding dress, can be seen on our Facebook page. Happy anniversary Tom and Maria!The happy couple cutting the cake

Advertise and they will come.

Executive Director — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:21:52 +0000

We had a big crowd at our Community Day this past weekend, with budding Thomas Cole artists at work on a 12-foot-long landscape painting and dancing around to live banjo music. I was glad to see that they also visited and enjoyed our Duncanson exhibition, as you can see in this photo. Best of all, we learned that most visitors had never been to the site before and lived nearby -- exactly who we had hoped would come! How did they find out about the event? It seems that the good old-fashioned sandwich boards around town did the trick.

Hurricane coming to the Thomas Cole site

Executive Director — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 19:09:54 +0000

We don't know how bad the winds and rain will get, so to be safe we will be closed on Sunday August 28th due to Hurricane Irene. Inside, we've made preparations in case there is a leak, and we placed fitted plywood covers over all the windows to be extra secure. In this photo you can see the house all ready for the storm. Be safe everyone!

A "Claude Mirror"

Executive Director — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:32:03 +0000

Now, no matter where you are, what time of day, or what season of the year, you can enjoy the same view of the Catskill Mountains that Thomas Cole enjoyed every day from his porch at Cedar Grove. How? We are streaming live on the website the reflection seen in a "Claude Mirror," a 19th-century optical device, recently installed on our site. The installation is thanks to a unique parternship with contemporary artist Alex McKay who is, wonderfully, just as interested in 19th-century landscape aesthetics as we at the Thomas Cole Historic Site are! Claude mirrors were used in the 18th and 19th centuries by tourists and artists for viewing, drawing, and painting the landscape. Named for 17th-century French painter Claude Lorraine, Alex McKay has revived this unique optical device in creating exciting new artistic work for the 21st-century. You can learn more about Alex McKay at his website, http://alexmckay.ca/. You can view the "Claude Mirror" at the Thomas Cole Historic Site online anytime, anywhere, at: www.thomascole.org/claude-mirror. Enjoy the view!

Springtime is for gardening

Executive Director — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:29:53 +0000

This week we started intalling the new kitchen garden, right on the very spot where it was in Thomas Cole's time. A crew of volunteers will plant the seeds and tend it -- let us know if you would like to join the garden team! The garden is part of our overall landscape restoration project: The landscape architect Robert M. Toole researched the history of the land around Cole's home and drew up a detailed restoration plan for us, and now we are implementing it. If you would like to help with the garden this season, you can contact Melissa at 518-943-7465 extension 5.

For all you collectors out there

Executive Director — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:26:26 +0000

Almost every week I get a call or email from someone with a painting that might be by Thomas Cole, or perhaps it is a Hudson River School painting by someone else, and the painting's owner looks to me for answers. I wish we had an expert on staff with such knowledge, but alas, we don't. And the folks at the Kellogg business school didn't delve into painting-identification when I obtained my MBA in marketing and non-profit management. So what to do? I'm pleased to announce a new section of our website called "For Collectors" that attempts to answer the questions that we hear the most, drawing upon the expertise of experts in the field such the owner of a gallery devoted to 19th-century painting. In the future, we plan to add an upload feature where collectors can post a photograph of their painting so that other collectors can weigh in on it too. There seems to be a need for a place for collectors to show and discuss objects. In the mean time, I hope that the new "frequently asked questions" page will get people started. Please feel free to offer feedback here on the blog page about the new section, and what you would like to see there.

Our Upcoming Exhibition

Executive Director — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:31:20 +0000

Robert S. Duncanson, Untitled, 1861. Courtesy Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, NYI have recently received some beautiful images of the paintings that will be coming to us in May as part of our 2011 exhibition, Robert S. Duncanson: The Spiritual Striving of the Freedman’s Son. Duncanson was the first African-American landscape painter to gain international renown, and his work is magnificent. It is especially significant that this exhibition will bring the work of this ground-breaking artist to the home of Thomas Cole, as Cole was a major influence on Duncanson. The exhibition is curated by Joseph D. Ketner, the Henry and Lois Foster Chair in Contemporary Art and the Distinguished Curator-in-Residence at Emerson College in Boston. He is the author of the definitive book about the artist, The Emergence of the African- American Artist: Robert S. Duncanson 1821-1872. The catalogue for this exhibition will contain an essay by Mr. Ketner including new information on the artist and color illustrations of many new paintings discovered over the past fifteen years. We will post more of the images on our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/ThomasColeHistoricSite.

Picturing this house full of paintings

Executive Director — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:04:40 +0000

The stories are pouring in now, thanks to a grant from the IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) that funded research into the look and usage of the rooms in these historic buildings. This past weekend, the researcher Jean Dunbar presented some of her extensive findings to our volunteers and docents, and she has opened such wonderful new windows into an earlier world! One aspect of her research that I find particularly enticing is the notion of Cole's home as a gallery and "sales room" for his art, and the involvement of the entire household in the effort. He writes one day (in an undated letter) from the great hotel known as the Catskill Mountain House to his wife Maria's sister Harriet, who lived here in the Main House in Catskill along with a great many other family members:

Dear Harriet,
The gentleman who will present this [letter] to you is Mr. McConkey from Ohio. I should wish you to be polite to him & show him the pictures in both the House & in the Studio -- put the pictures in as good a light as you can. We did intend to come down this morning, but it appears so hot a day that we shall defer until to-morrow morning...

Who knew that Harriet doubled as the gallery assistant? Through the many accounts of her life, she is emerging as a most capable and fascinating woman. Thomas concluded his letter saying: "Maria says don't let the children run in the Sun."

About that stone wall...

Executive Director — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:43:00 +0000

By far the most visible part of our sprawling landscape restoration is the stone wall and picket fence that is currently being installed along Spring Street. In this photo, the wall is about 75% of its final height, and the picket fence has been added to one side of an opening for a pedestrian entrance. The wall and fence are going to be beautiful additions to the site, and the best thing about them is that they are exact replicas of what was there in Thomas Cole's time. There is a detailed pencil sketch by the artist Frederic Church that was done just a few months after Cole died in 1848 (see below), giving us a highly skilled, first-hand account of what was there. In addition, we conducted archaeological digs to locate the original wall, and we are able to reuse a great deal of stone that we found still buried there. The final work will include large brick piers to mark the main carriage entrance, wooden posts to mark pedestrian entrances, and graceful wooden gates at several points. It is now too cold to do the final painting, so the fence pieces were primed indoors and will receive their paint in the spring.

Frederic Church, Thomas Cole's Cedar Grove, 1848. Courtesy of the Olana State Historic Site