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Inspiration Point Two artists who created a sensation in 19th-century America discovered their subject matter in New York's Hudson River Valley. By Judith Bell
Just across the river in the town of Catskill is Cedar Grove, the more modest home of Thomas Cole, the British-born painter credited with establishing the Hudson River School. He was also Church's teacher. The homes of both can be visited today. The exotic Olana is a New York State Historic Site that remains virtually unchanged from the time Church lived there; until recently Cedar Grove stood empty and was in serious need of restoration, a situation that has finally changed for the better. To appreciate Cole and Church, venture into the Catskill Mountains that inspired their paintings. Here the mountains rise to 3,000 feet and you can stand on the precipitous ledges just east of North Lake and see five states. The landscape below drops down to the Hudson River. Follow trails originally blazed for the guests of 19th-century resorts and you'll find the waterfalls, lakes, and glens that once inspired artists. My first exposure to these places came in darkened lecture halls or museums where as an art history graduate student I studied landscape paintings from the Hudson River School (and I should point out that the Hudson River School was not an institution of learning—it was a loose classification for a number of artists with a shared philosophy of art). I wondered what it would be like to walk through landscapes I had visited vicariously so many times. Last fall I found out.
Cole took up residence at Cedar Grove after his marriage in 1836. Originally a large farm with river views to the east and mountain views to the west, the land has been reduced to a small parcel wedged in a commercial strip. Recognized as a National Historic Landmark, the yellow Federal-style frame house is structurally sound, although it became run down and was closed to the public for several years. Then in 1998 the Greene County Historical Society acquired the property from the Thomas Cole Foundation and began restoring it, at a cost to date of some $600,000. "We're not done yet," says Greene County historian Raymond Beecher. "But what we've done is well done." It reopened briefly in the fall of 2000 and will be open weekends during the spring and summer season, and visitors will be able to see some of Cole's actual possessions. When Cole unveiled the first paintings he made from his sketching trips into the Catskills, people thought America's landscape was inferior to Europe's. "It was considered wild, uncultivated, and monotonous in its undeveloped state," explains Pat Murphy, one of the owners of Highland Flings, the tour company that guided my visit. "Painters were told if they wanted to paint landscape they should go to Europe and paint classical landscape. Cole's accomplishment was momentous.... Americans for the first time felt pride in their landscape." Cole's paintings made him an immediate success, and he became the first painter to make a living exclusively from landscapes. "You could always tell by the throng around them in what part of the room they hung," said novelist James Fenimore Cooper of Cole's paintings. John Trumbull, president of the American Academy of Fine Arts, saw Cole's work and declared, "This youth has done what I all my life have tried to do in vain."
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