Study for “A Wild Scene,”1831
Oil on canvas, 11 x 17”
Unsigned
Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of romantic landscape painting, imbued his art with the moral issues and high ideals that had been the province of history painting. He was also one of the first to realize--and regret--that America’s passion for progress was destroying its unique wilderness.
This study relates to Cole’s Course of Empire series, five paintings that chronicle human progress from barbarism to grandeur to corruption and inevitable extinction. The primitive human settlement visible on the middle cliff indicates that the taming of the wilderness is beginning.
Cole painted a Connecticut "wilderness" for an early patron, Daniel Wadsworth, who bought several Cole paintings for his Hartford museum and commissioned a view of his summer home.