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Thomas
Cole

United States • 1801−1848
Thomas Cole (English Thomas Cole, February 1, 1801, Lancaster, England - February 11, 1848, Catskill, America) - the first American landscape painter, founder of America’s most famous art movement in the 19th century - Hudson River School.

American art at the beginning of the XIX century - a young and provincial phenomenon. Local artists imitated European, more often English. Popular portraits and historical paintings. Thomas Cole studied painting just at one of the wandering portrait painters, because there were no art schools in America. His parents moved to America from England when Thomas was 17 years old. He will return to his homeland when he is 28, and will spend here 3 years. The greatest impression on him will produce paintings John Constable.

After traveling to Italy, Thomas Cole returned to America - and became the founder of the very first school of painting, the Hudson River School. Fifty artists gathered around him who painted American landscapes - and these landscapes were really similar to America, and not to variations of European species.

Thomas Cole lived quite a bit, he was 47 years old when he died from a viral infection. But he managed to get American citizenship and was very proud of it.

Features of the artist Thomas Cole: Cole is called the first American landscape painter, and therefore there is often confusion with the definition of the style in which he worked. Its waterfalls and mountain rivers, grandiose views of the wide valleys and volcanoes are written in a romantic style. Thomas Cole influenced several generations of American artists, starting withGeorge Innes and endingtonalists and impressionist. His landscapes are the real America, recognizable, harmonious, wild, those places that have not yet experienced the disfiguring influence of the industrial revolution. And because of this special connection with the land on which he lived and which he wrote, Thomas Cole often passes in art history descriptions on the part of naturalism. And the Hudson River School is attributed to American naturalism completely.

Famous paintings by artist Thomas Cole: "Sunrise in the Catskills", "Mount Etna", "American Lake", "House in the forest", "Tornado".
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