About the Artwork
The reflection of an evening sky shimmers on a large lake dotted with small islands. The painter directs our attention to the nearest of the islands, from which the leafless limbs of two dying trees reach high into the yellowing sky. To their right, blending into the foliage, a man in Native American costume sits.
The composition is probably based on a lake in New Hampshire. But Thomas Cole gave the painting a generic title: American Lake Scene. By the 1840s, most Native Americans remaining in New Hampshire had adopted European styles of dress and had largely melted into the local population. Like most of his Euro-American contemporaries, Cole believed that the destruction and eventual disappearance of Native American societies was inevitable. Cole used the Indigenous figure symbolically, to suggest that the man’s people — or at least their way of life — were dying, like the two tallest trees, like the setting sun.
American Lake Scene
1844
Thomas Cole
1801-1848
American
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Oil on canvas
Framed: 27 1/8 × 33× 4 inches (68.9 × 83.8 × 10.2 cm) Unframed: 18 1/4 × 24 1/2 inches (46.4 × 62.2 cm)
Paintings
American Art before 1950
Gift of Douglas F. Roby
56.31
Public Domain
Markings
Signed and dated, at right, lower center of island: T. Cole 1844
Provenance
American Art Union.Young Men's Mercantile Association (Cincinnati, Ohio, USA).
T. L. Ogden (New York, New York, USA);
a descendant of Ogden.
John J. Bowden (Long Island, New York, USA).
Douglas F. Roby (Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA);
1956-present, gift to the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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Provenance pageExhibition History
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The American Art-Union. Exh. cat. New York, 1844, no. 7.
Cowdrey, Bartlett. "The American Academy and American Art Union Exhibition Record." Bulletin of the New-York Historical Society 7 (1953): p. 81.
Grigaut, Paul L. "An American Lake Scene by Thomas Cole." Bulletin of the DIA 35, 4 (1955-1956): pp. 88-90.
Woods, Willis F., ed. Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts: A Checklist of the Paintings Acquired Before June 1965. Detroit, 1965, p. 26.
The Painter and the New World. Exh. cat., The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Montreal, 1967, no. 318.
Cummings, Frederick J., and Charles H. Elam, eds. DIA Illustrated Handbook. Detroit, 1971, p. 139.
Huntington, David C. Art and the Excited Spirit. Exh. cat., University of Michigan of Art. Ann Arbor, 1972, p. 34, no. 39 (pl. 69).
The American Frontier: Images and Myths. Exh. cat., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian. 1973.
Sweeney, J. Gray. Great Lakes Marine Painting of the Nineteenth Century. Exh. cat., Muskegon Museum of Art. Muskegon, MI, 1983, pp.38-39 (ill.).
Shaw, Nancy Rivard et al. American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Vol. 1. New York, 1991, cat. 17, pp. 50-53 (ill.).
The Course of Empire. Exh. cat., National Museum of American Art. 1994.
American Beauty: Painting and Sculpture from the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1770-1920. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 2002, pp. 48-49, no. 32 (ill.).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
This work is in the public domain.
Thomas Cole, American Lake Scene, 1844, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Douglas F. Roby, 56.31.
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