View of Schroon Mountain, Essex County, New York, After a Storm (1838): Art, History and Details

View of Schroon Mountain, Essex County, New York, After a Storm (1838) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Thomas Cole (American, born England,1801–1848).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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 had been forcibly removed from land east of the Mississippi River. While continuing to live, hunt, and fish in the area, these Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples were compelled to significantly adapt their existence amid increasing White settlement and its attendant lumber, mining, and tourist industries.

Object facts

• Title: View of Schroon Mountain, Essex County, New York, After a Storm
• Date: 1838
• Creator attribution: Thomas Cole (American, born England,1801–1848)
• Culture: America
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 132.5 x 193.5 x 13 cm (52 3/16 x 76 3/16 x 5 1/8 in.); Unframed: 99.8 x 160.6 cm (39 5/16 x 63 1/4 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1917.1335

A detail from the museum

Nicknamed "Schroon Mountain" by the artist, the peak's official name is Hoffman Mountain.

Collection credit

Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• American Art Association. Illustrated Catalogue of the Valuable Paintings by the Great and Little Masters of the Old and Modern Schools Formed by Mr. Nicholas M. Matthews of Baltimore. New York: The Association, 1914.
• American Federation of Arts. American Art Annual. New York: MacMillan Co, 1898.
• American Art Annual 11 (1914): 481.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.