In the Simmental, Switzerland, Thomas Cole

Exhibition Label:
"Empire of Things," 2013, Kate Meyer
Cole is primarily known for his Hudson River landscapes. His paintings brought him out of poverty and into fame and fortune in America during his lifetime. Cole’s eventual wealth and status afforded him the opportunity to travel to Europe for an extended Grand Tour of England, France, Switzerland, and Italy in the early 1840s. In contrast to the voyages of many wealthy tourists, Cole’s Grand Tour served as a research trip. He made copious notes and sketches of his travels in anticipation of returning to America to paint and sell his impressions of Europe’s natural wonders. He described the Alps as “stupendous mountains with snow-clad summits, impending crags, black pinnacles of rock, foaming torrents and houses clustered in the depths of the valleys,” adding that these features “combined to produce such pictures of savage grandeur and pastoral beauty as one could never have imagined.” Cole painted In the Simmental in 1843 from sketches drawn during this trip, authenticating the scene with the inclusion of a resting group of Simmental cattle, a breed not yet seen in North America, in a verdant Alpine valley.

Archive Label 2003 and 1999:
Thomas Cole was the father of the Hudson River School, a group of painters bonded by optimism, enthusiasm, and a belief in the American wilderness. He believed, like other painters of this group, that landscape, no matter how vast, could be assembled into an image that expressed the spiritual or philosophical heart of the scene and a communication between man and God. In the Simmenthal shows this relationship between man and God in the juxtaposition of the monumental mountain peak and the church steeple. The lighting in this painting maintains an aura of spiritual sublimity. Cole believed the sky was the soul of all scenery and that in it was the fountain of light, shade, and color.

In 1841, Cole traveled to Switzerland and took a walking tour of the pass of the Simmenthal. After returning to America, he described what he saw: “Stupendous mountains with snowclad summits, impending crags, black pinnacles of rock, foaming torrents and houses clustered in the depths of the valleys altogether combined to produce such pictures of savage grandeur and pastoral beauty as one could never have imagined.” Cole painted In the Simmenthal in 1843 from sketches drawn during this trip. This was the last European scene he painted.