View of Schroon Mountain, Essex County, New York, After a Storm

A CLOSER LOOK

The museum identifies this painting as oil on canvas and credits Thomas Cole (American, born England,1801–1848).

The museum's collection notes: Championing the American wilderness, Cole declared, "We are still in Eden," in his Essay on American Scenery, published two years before he painted this view of the Adirondacks. The artist sketched the scene in early summer, but when he created the painting in his studio, he rendered it in a dramatic blaze of fall colors. Such a choice likely had nationalistic overtones; he once proclaimed that autumn was "one season where the American forest surpasses all the world in gorgeousness." Cole included two Indigenous men in the painting’s right foreground foliage. At this time, the Adirondacks remained home to many Native Americans long after most