Thomas Cole and the Romantic Roots of American Landscape Painting

In the first part of the 19^th century, the leading landscape painter in America was an Englishman, Thomas Cole. Why was it that it took an outsider to so appreciate the raw beauty of the American wilderness that he turned it into an art form?

In his dynamic visual presentation at the Glaser Center, Dr. Bruce Elliott  (UC Berkeley) situates Thomas Cole in the larger context of the European Romantic movement that was building in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. Dr. Elliott will show how the work of Cole and other painters of the Hudson Valley School helped foster the first stirrings of environmental consciousness in the United States.