The Course of Empire
When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, I spent a lot of time dreaming of escape to the Land of Rip Van Winkle. I didn’t have a car or any easy...
Tagged: Thomas Cole
Boot Jack Rock
A rock is just a rock until its secret is known—or as they used to say in olden times, until its guardian spirit is teased out. The ancient Romans had a term for it—genius...
An Artist’s Privy
Cedar Grove was the home of Thomas Cole from 1836, when he married the proprietor’s niece, until 1848, when the artist unexpectedly died of a lung ailment. Of the original structures that adorned the...
Art Trail
Here in the Land of Rip Van Winkle, an art trail begins or ends at everybody’s front door. Innumerable are such trails, and infinite the vistas. After all, to live in this place is...
Artist Graveyards
Not long ago, I made a trip down the mountain and across the river to Columbia County to visit historic Hudson City Cemetery. I was looking for the grave of Sanford Robinson Gifford, who...
Fred the Artist
The artist Fred De Sawal had his studio in a ramshackle cottage along old Route 23 in Leeds, New York. It was located not far from the Jolly House resort, where some of his...
Thomas Cole’s Last Mountain
The artist Thomas Cole died at home in the village of Catskill on February 11, 1848. He had just turned forty-seven years old. Even by 19th-century standards, this seems young. Consider, for example, Cole’s...
Names on the Mountains
The map, they say, is not the territory, but a map does come in handy when trying to find your way around the territory. The region of the highest peaks in the Catskills—including all...
Kaaterskill Falls in Winter
During the bitter winter of 1843, the artist Thomas Cole made an arduous day trip by sleigh from his home in the village of Catskill to the precipice of Kaaterskill Falls. He and his...