ArtNC

 For Thomas Cole, landscape painting was more than the depiction of scenery. Through his paintings of the vast American wilderness, the artist hoped to stir the viewer to contemplate the natural purity and boundless promise of the New World. Both his art and his spiritual zeal inspired several generations of American landscape painters known collectively as the Hudson River school.

This small painting dates from Cole's early career, when the young painter was first exploring the dramatic possibilities of landscape art. Based on studies made in New York's Catskill Mountains, the composition presents a romantic, deeply moral vision of primeval nature, its wildness contrasting with the "civilized" landscapes of Europe. That Cole intended such paintings as hymns to nature and nature's God is evident in his poetry, particularly "Lines from Lake George", written in the same year as this painting:

O may the voice of music that so chime
With the wild mountain breeze and rippling lake
Ne'er wake the soul but to a keener sense
Of nature's beauties...

 The pioneering family blazing a new life in the wilderness is one of the great American stories. In the mid-nineteenth century, the earnest and self-reliant homesteader exemplified the spirit of the young Republic. Many artists like Jasper Cropsey celebrated a romantic vision of backwoods America. Derived from sketches made in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, this painting shows a recently cleared farm with a young family going about the morning chores. Though the precariousness of the family's existence is perhaps implied by the dark, encircling forest, the valley itself is bathed in the hopeful light of morning.

By their industry the forest has surrendered to fields and pasture: livestock graze, grain awaits cutting, and vegetables ripen in the garden. In the foreground the farmer and an American Indian converse beside a newly laid corduroy (or log) road that promises an end to the valley's isolation.