19th century landscape painting gifted to Thomas Cole Site

CATSKILL―The Thomas Cole National Historic Site announced on Wednesday the gift of a major 19th century landscape painting to the Thomas Cole Site.

The painting, Approaching Storm (Land Storm) by Thomas Doughty, is a gift from Laura Grey, a prominent art collector and philanthropist. Grey and her late husband, David Grey, previously donated an important painting by Thomas Cole titled Tower by Moonlight to the Thomas Cole Site.

Thomas Doughty (1793-1856) was the first American artist to identify himself as a landscape painter. In focusing on nature as a worthy subject for art, he influenced Thomas Cole, Cole’s work, and his career. It is, therefore, especially poignant to have this work by an artist Cole greatly admired now on permanent display in Thomas Cole’s historic home and studios in Catskill.

The painting is oil on canvas, measures 23 x 31 inches, and is signed and dated “T. Doughty 1822.” It was most recently exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the exhibition From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic (June - December 2019). The Greys, who had purchased the painting at the Philadelphia Art Show in 2010, loaned it for the 2019 exhibition.

David Grey wrote about this painting in a 2015 article for the Thomas Cole Site, noting: “It includes the very same compositional features as exist in one of the few documented works by Cole before 1825, Moonlit Landscape with Two Figures (1824), which include a prostrate tree across the foreground, a dramatic mound of earth in the middle ground from which trees reach out in different directions, with slightly oversized figures in the foreground.”

“When my husband and I first saw this painting, we both fell in love with it immediately,” said Laura Grey.

“My husband David was the art researcher, I was the art observer, and we both recognized this painting as an example of Doughty’s prime ability. That’s what we always looked for, as we assembled our collection of landscape paintings, especially the Hudson River School,” she added.

Maura O’Shea, executive director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, said they are thrilled to have Approaching Storm (Land Storm) in their permanent collection of the Thomas Cole Site.

“The number one interest we hear from our visitors is to see original paintings, and this gift directly meets their need. It’s exciting to see this important painting―by an artist who influenced Thomas Cole directly―now hanging in his own home,” O’Shea said.

Kevin Avery, senior research scholar at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, will give a talk on the painting on Sunday, April 19 at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. More information on the talk is available at thomascole.org/events.

“We never bought paintings based on size, always on quality. Similarly, we fell in love with Thomas Cole’s home at the Thomas Cole Site, and I’m very pleased that this painting is now on permanent display there,” Laura Grey said.

“A painting should be alive and should make you feel that it is speaking to you. I hope that this painting will now do that for every visitor to the Thomas Cole Site,” she added.

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