These acclaimed 19th-century artists painted landscapes to preserve them. You can walk in their footsteps today

Spend a day exploring the homes and studios of Thomas Cole, father of the Hudson River School, and of his student, Frederic Edwin Church, once the most famous American artist

BY JENNIFER HUBERDEAU

In the 1830s, Thomas Cole began painting the Catskill Mountains as a way to preserve the beauty of a land he was sure would disappear, never to be seen again.

Cole had seen it happen before, in England, where the Industrial Revolution had swallowed the countryside with factories and pollution. His family, decorative artists, had fled to America to start over in 1818. But the machines and factories soon followed, even as he found his way into New York’s Hudson Valley. His journals reflect his anger at the development along Catskill Creek — ice houses, gristmills, railroads, hotels, tanneries and quarries. He painted the land as a way to preserve it for future generations.

In 1833, the artist rented a cottage from John Thomson to use as a studio at Cedar Grove, a working farm in Catskill, N.Y. In 1836, he became part of the family, marrying Thomson’s niece Maria Bartow, and moved into the main house.

Although Cole would buy 2 1/2 acres from Thomson, intending to build a home, he eventually took over the main house, where he and Maria raised their five children. Cole never formally owned the house or the 110-acre farm, as it was passed on to Emily Bartow, Maria’s sister, following their uncle’s death in 1846. “We discovered that [Thomas Cole] redecorated the inside of the house when he moved in. He painted directly on the walls. He did all of this interior design in the house because he was a working artist and he wanted to show his paintings in the best light,” said Kate Menconeri, the site’s chief curator and director of curatorial affairs, contemporary art and fellowship, during a recent tour.

“In interpreting the site, as a historic artist’s home and studio, we did both a historic re-creation of the site and a historic restoration. We wanted to show the borders and the walls that he painted and we restored all of that.

“On the first floor, we re-created the scene of what paintings you would have seen and what would have been here because, in Cole’s time, this is where people came to see the latest in contemporary art and contemporary landscape painting.”

On the second floor, in addition to re-creating the family’s living spaces, there are original paintings — works by Cole and two other Cole family artists — his sister, Sarah Cole, who also painted landscapes, and his daughter, Emily Cole.

From 1839 to 1846, Cole used part of a barn as his studio, where he painted many of his major works, including the series, “The Voyage of Life,” until building the New Studio in 1846. He would use the studio until his death in 1848.

As part of honoring Cole’s legacy of showing contemporary art in the main house, the National Historic Site hosts “Open House: Contemporary Art in Conversation with Cole,” featuring the work of a contemporary artist whose work is made in response to Cole’s work and the historic home and studio. Catskill-based artist Marc Swanson’s “A Memorial To Ice At The Dead Deer Disco” is on view through Nov. 27. (To read more, see page 32.) A companion piece of the same name is on view at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams through Jan. 1, 2023.

“One of the things we’re always thinking about is ‘Why do Cole and his work matter now?’ Time and time again the answer is his connection to the natural world. That still feels urgent today,” Menconeri said. “We’re really lucky because not only did he paint but he also wrote about the natural environment.”

In addition to the main house, visitors are able to tour both of his studios. The New Studio, torn down in the 1970s, was reconstructed in 2015 according to plans and photographs and is used for rotating exhibitions. Now on view, through Oct. 30, is “Thomas Cole’s Studio: Memory and Inspiration,” curated by Franklin Kelly, senior curator and curator of American paintings at the National Gallery of Art.

“It’s really extraordinary because it’s looking at what Cole’s studio would look like in 1848. While Cole was painting here, he died very suddenly and they left his studio as a shrine. Franklin Kelly has reimagined what the studio looked like upon his passing,” Menconeri said.

FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH AND OLANA

In 1844, Cole took on a student, Frederic Edwin Church, the son of a wealthy businessman in Hartford, Conn. Church’s father agreed to pay $300 per year for his son’s instruction, which lasted until 1846.

Olana, home of Frederic Edwin Church, is connected to Thomas Cole’s house by the Hudson River Skywalk, a six-mile out-and-back scenic pedestrian walkway that travels over the Rip Van Winkle Bridge.

PHOTO BY JENNIFER HUBERDEAU

Church began his career as an artist associated with the Hudson River School, creating idealized natural landscapes of the Hudson Valley. But he soon developed his own style, still focusing on nature, but with a wider lens, eventually becoming known as a travel painter.

He was an artist, but he was also a savvy businessman, painting his most famous work, “Niagara,” with a plan for exhibition in mind. He sold the work for $4,500, including $2,000 in reproduction rights, to New York art dealers and printers Williams, Stevens & Williams. He then took the painting on tour. From May 1-29, 1857, tens of thousands of people paid 25 cents to view the painting in a dark New York City gallery, where only the painting was illuminated. He then took the painting on the road, to London and later Glasglow, Scotland, adding the ability to buy prints of it, in color — $30 for an artist’s proof and $15 for a print. He would later repeat this strategy.

Church created his paintings in his studio, based on sketches from his travels to the White Mountains; western Massachusetts; the Catskills; Hartford, Conn.; Niagara; Virginia; Kentucky, and Maine. He made two trips to South America in 1853 and 1857, the first of which was financed by Cyrus W. Field, of Stockbridge.

Not only was Church a successful contemporary artist, with a fortune thought to be $1 million at the time of his death in 1900, but he was also the most successful and famous artist in America of his lifetime. In 1876, when “Niagara” was bought at auction by William Wilson Corcoran for $12,500, it set a record for money paid for a painting by an American artist.

In 1860, a few months before his marriage to Isabel Carnes, Church purchased a 126-acre farm on a south-facing slope in Columbia County — one he had painted while a student at Cole’s farm, just three miles away on the other side of the Hudson River. There, they added a cottage believed to be designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Church designed gardens, planted an orchard, dredged a marsh to create a lake and built a studio. In 1867, the couple acquired the top of the hill, where after an 18-month trip to Europe and the Middle East, Church and architect Calvert Vaux designed the mansion named Olana.

Inspired by the architecture they had seen on their travels in Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus in 1868, Church designed a house that incorporates an unusual mixture of Victorian structural elements and Middle Eastern decorative motifs.

Today, Olana is part of the New York State Parks system, which grants free access to the historic site’s 250 acres, daily from 8 a.m. to sunset. Exploration of Church’s designed landscape, which includes five miles of carriage roads, is encouraged. Guided walking tours and guided EV driving tours of the grounds are offered, as well as guided tours and self-guided tours of the first and second floors of the mansion, where the interior remains much as it was during Church’s lifetime, exotically furnished and decorated with objects from his global travels, and with some 40 paintings by Church and his contemporaries. ■

The Catskill Mountains as seen from the porch of Thomas Cole’s house in Catskill, N.Y.

PHOTO BY JENNIFER HUBERDEAU

If You Go …

Both sites are just an hour’s drive from Pittsfield.

Thomas Cole National Historic Site

Where: 218 Spring St., Catskill, N.Y.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday through Tuesday. Closed Wednesdays. Guided house tours for up to 12 people on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Self-guided tours for up to 25 people on Saturday and Sunday.

Admission: $20, adults; $18, 62 and over, students with ID, active military and veterans with ID; free for children 15 and under. Advanced registration is suggested. Last tour begins at 4 p.m.

Tickets for the New Studio exhibition-only are available at the visitors center.

Tickets: 518-943-7465, thomascole.org

Olana State Historic Site

Where: 5720 State Route 9G, Hudson, N.Y

Hours: 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Friday through Wednesday, for house and landscape tours. House closes at 4:30 p.m. Grounds are open daily, 8 a.m. to sunset.

Admission: Free to explore the grounds. Guided tours: $20, adults, guided tour of the first floor of the house (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday): $10, adults, guided tour of the second floor of the house (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday); $30, adults, self-guided tour, Friday through Saturday only. Children 12 and under are free. $12, adults; 60-minute walking landscape tour; $20, ages 8 and up, 30-minute EV driving landscape tour; $40, 60-minute EV driving landscape tour.

HISTORIC ARTISTS’ HOMES AND STUDIOS

Olana State Historic Site and the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, are both members of the Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios program, a coalition of 48 museums that were the homes and working studios of American artists. Member organizations in the Berkshires include the Frelinghuysen Morris House & Studio, Chesterwood and Norman Rockwell’s Studio at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Learn more at: artistshomes.org

TAKE A WALK

\Situated just three miles apart, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and Fredric Church’s Olana are connected by the Hudson River Skywalk. The six-mile out-and-back scenic walkway takes visitors over the scenic Rip Van Winkle Bridge, featuring breathtaking views that inspired both artists.