Lake with Dead Trees (Catskill)

Recognized as the leading American landscape painter of the first half of the nineteenth century, Thomas Cole celebrated the uniqueness of the native American landscape, which was critical for the development of the Hudson River School. His expressive landscapes, often imbued with religious overtones and the sublime, showed the influence of his British predecessors J. M. W. Turner and John Martin. Among Cole's followers were Asher B. Durand (1796-1886) and his student Frederic Edwin Church (1826- 1900), whose work in the 1850s and '60s as part of the second generation of the Hudson River School is characterized by direct observation of nature.

Lake with Dead Trees (Catskill) is based on sketches Cole made in late summer 1825 with support from his patron, New York merchant George Washington Bruen. The twenty-four-year-old artist traveled by steamboat up the Hudson River, disembarking at West Point and Catskill, New York. The drawings Cole made on this trip served as the basis for a powerful group of new landscape paintings. A pencil drawing (now at the Detroit Institute of Arts) made at this time is inscribed "Lake of Dead Trees" and depicts the general composition of the AMAM painting with light and color notations. In the present work, Cole amplifies the story and enhances the wilderness aspect of the Catskill landscape-dead trees appear in the left foreground along with two fleeing deer and the setting sun in the right distance. These details support many varied literary, religious, or other symbolic readings of the picture and anticipate Cole's later allegorical landscapes.

The Oberlin painting is one of three by Cole that were shown in the window of William Coleman's New York shop in late October or early November 1825. The landscapes captured the attention of artist and president of the American Academy of Fine Arts Colonel John Trumbull (1756- 1843), who purchased one of the paintings (Kaaterskill Upper Fall, Catskill Mountains, location unknown). Trumbull was so impressed with Cole's work that he called them to the attention of writer and artist William Dunlap (1766-1839), who bought the AMAM painting, and to artist Asher B. Durand, who purchased View of Fort Putnam (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia).

The story of Trumbull's enthusiastic reaction to Cole's three landscapes quickly achieved legendary status. The New York Evening Post extensively described this discovery and famously quoted Trumbull as saying to William Coleman, "What I now purchase for 25 dollars I would not part for 25 guineas. I am delighted, and at the same time mortified. This youth has done at once, and without instruction, what I can not do after fifty years practice" (New York Evening Post, November 22, 1825). Shortly after Trumbull, Dunlap, and Durand acquired Cole's paintings, they were exhibited together at the New York Academy of Fine Arts.

Marking a significant moment in American art history, these early sales launched Cole's career as a landscape painter and led the way to important future commissions. Lake with Dead Trees was donated to Oberlin College in 1904 by Cleveland educator Charles F. Olney and was first exhibited in the town's Carnegie library, more than ten years before a museum was built for the College.