Thomas Cole
(1801 - 1848)

 

Thomas Cole  was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintings. Influenced by European painters, but with a strong American sensibility, he was prolific throughout his career and worked primarily with oil on canvas. His paintings are typically allegoric and often depict small figures or structures set against moody and evocative natural landscapes. They are usually escapist, framing the New World as a natural eden contrasting with the smog-filled cityscapes of Industrial Revolution-era Britain, in which he grew up. His works, often seen as conservative, criticize the contemporary trends of industrialism, urbanism, and westward expansion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cole

Scene from "The Last of the Mohicans," Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund
1827
Oil on Canvas
64.5 × 89.1 cm
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, on loan to the MET
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/710416