Thomas Cole English, American, 1801-1848
Italian Scene, 1840s
Oil on canvas
10 x 14 inches
25.4 x 35.6 cm
25.4 x 35.6 cm
Signed with initials at lower right: TC
Thomas Cole visited Italy during two trips: 1829-1831, and 1841, when he ventured north to Switzerland before returning home in the summer of 1842. The present work was painted on...
Thomas Cole visited Italy during two trips: 1829-1831, and 1841, when he ventured north to Switzerland before returning home in the summer of 1842. The present work was painted on the latter trip or shortly thereafter from sketches. By this late moment in Cole's career, he had been introduced to the art of plein air painting, but did not adopt the practice universally. The pencil sketch remained his favored mnemonic device.
"I am now engaged in painting a picture representing a Ruined & Solitary Tower that stands on a craggy promontory whose base is laved by a calm unruffled ocean . . . I think it will be poetical, there is a stillness, a loneliness about it that may reach the Imagination."
- Thomas Cole, 1839
"I am now engaged in painting a picture representing a Ruined & Solitary Tower that stands on a craggy promontory whose base is laved by a calm unruffled ocean . . . I think it will be poetical, there is a stillness, a loneliness about it that may reach the Imagination."
- Thomas Cole, 1839
Provenance
The artist; toTheodore Alexander Cole (his son); to
Florence Cole Vincent, Cedar Grove, New York (his daughter); to
Theodore and Elizabeth Van Loan (her nephew), 1961; to
Descended in the family, until the present
1
of
15
