Sketch for View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow)

Thomas Cole American

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 759

For Cole, sketching outdoors was essential to the close study of nature and an indispensable tool in the creation of a significant studio painting. For The Oxbow (on view nearby), Cole made a pencil drawing on site and later painted this small oil sketch in his studio as he worked to establish the composition, color balance, and internal rhythm of the scene. A squiggle of paint at the lower right appears almost human—perhaps a first suggestion of the artist’s presence in the landscape, as seen in his self-portrait in the final canvas.

Sketch for View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow), Thomas Cole (American, Lancashire 1801–1848 Catskill, New York), Oil and pencil on composition board, American

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Sketch for View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow), Thomas Cole (American, Lancashire 1801–1848 Catskill, New York), Oil and pencil on composition board, American
Sketch for View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow), Thomas Cole (American, Lancashire 1801–1848 Catskill, New York), Oil and pencil on composition board, American

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