Distant View of Niagara Falls
1830
Medium
Oil on wood panel
Dimensions
47.9 × 60.6 cm (18 7/8 × 23 7/8 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Arts of the Americas
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
90048
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Thomas Cole visited Niagara Falls in May 1829, composing this romanticized, autumnal scene the following year. Portraying the grandeur of the American landscape, the artist omitted the factories, scenic overlooks, and hotels that populated the area in the early 19th century. Cole expressed concern about the environmental impact of voracious industrialism, but at the same time his painting erased the human devastation wrought by colonialism and conquest in the region, which encompassed Attiwonder...
About the Artist
Thomas Cole · 1801–1848
Thomas Cole (1801–1848) was an English-born American painter who founded the Hudson River School, the first major American art movement, and became the most influential landscape painter in nineteenth-century American art. Born in Bolton, Lancashire, England, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1818, settling first in Ohio before moving to Philadelphia and then New York, where he ...