View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow

Putting It Together

Thomas Cole

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow

1836

Oil on canvas, 130.8 × 193 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Smarthistory's Bryan Zygmont traces a diagonal from lower right to upper left that splits the view into two unequal parts: storm and wilderness at left, sunlit farmland at right.

  • Find the painter, tiny at lower center: he has stopped sketching to look out at us. Smarthistory calls him "easily overlooked."
  • Next to the huge valley, that small figure sets the scale.

Concepts

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Public Domain (Met Open Access)

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