Thomas Cole- Round Top
How I have walked… day after day, and all alone, to see if there was not something among the old things which was new!
— Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
I am not sure if the words above from Thomas Cole refer to revisiting his older paintings to glean inspiration or if they have some other meaning. I immediately took them as meaning he sometimes looked back at his older work to see if there was something in them that could be explored once more and perhaps enhanced with the knowledge and expertise he had gained in the intervening time.
I know that this is my own purpose in periodically going back through the archives. I am looking for the inspiration that might come in seeing past compositions and uses of color or forms that may have changed over the years. Or simply ways of seeing and thinking thatmight have went in different directions and are ripe for a new examination.
If this is what Cole was intending then I am very pleased. I find his work, though worlds away from my own, intriguing. His body of work is pretty impressive, even for someone like me who isn’t always immediately drawn to traditional landscapes. Maybe that is because Cole’s works were not completely traditional. Perhaps it’s that he took such creative license with his subject matter, never being afraid to add his own romantic depth to landscapes that were already boldly dramatic in their own right.
The big got bigger and the wild, even wilder. His paintings and those of the other painters of the Hudson River School of painting were the face of 19th century America to the rest of the world, creating a romantic vision of a beautiful and wide open nation, one that drew masses to its shores.
I am also intrigued by the fact that he was primarily a self-taught artist and his prodigious productivity. And that he did this all before his death at age 47 at his home in Catskill, NY. Impressive by all accounts.
Thomas Cole- Distant View of Niagara Falls 1830
Thomas Cole- Evening in Arcady 1843
Thomas Cole – Sunset
Thomas Cole- The Clove, Catskills 1827
Thomas Cole- A Tornado in the Wilderness 1830
Redtree Times 
You’ve brought to mind my introduction to Cole, which came via Asher Brown Durand’s 1849 painting “Kindred Spirits.” The painting shows Cole and nature poet William Cullen Bryant in a Catskill Mountains setting. When Cole died, it seems he was widely mourned; pictorial tributes were common, and Durand’s is the most famous. It was sold by the NY Metropolitan (I think) to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas.
I periodically read through my old writings as well, remembering the choices I made, the turns I took at the various crossroads of plot. Sometimes I come across a crossroad and decide to explore the road I didn’t take. Sometimes I quickly remember why I chose the other road, but sometimes I come to unexplored country that looks interesting.