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We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”
Read the visual description

We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”

National Gallery of Art · Painting

A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch)

Thomas Cole

Date
1839
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 102 x 155.8 cm (40 3/16 x 61 5/16 in.) framed: 135.9 x 189.6 x 14 cm (53 1/2 x 74 5/8 x 5 1/2 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1967.8.1
Credit line
Andrew W. Mellon Fund
Time span
1826 to 1850
Department
CAB
Original NGA record Wikidata Print information

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • American
  • Landscape
  • United States
  • landscape
  • Romantic
  • American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I [A-L]
  • White Mountains
  • NH
  • Crawford Notch
  • Mountain pass
Provenance

Commissioned 1839 by Rufus L. Lord [1782-1869], New York.[1] Jonathan Sturges [1802-1874], New York, and Fairfield, Connecticut;[2] his son, Henry C. Sturges [d. 1924], Fairfield, Connecticut; his wife, Mrs. Henry C. Sturges, Fairfield, Connecticut; LeRoy Ireland, Philadelphia, probably early 1930s, but certainly by 1944;[3] purchased June 1944 by (Vose Galleries, Boston);[4] sold 5 April 1945 to Sanitary Scale Company, Belvidere, Illinois;[5] acquired 1966 by (Kennedy Galleries, New York); purchased 25 May 1967 by NGA. [1] Lord commissioned the painting from Cole in 1839; see Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., "Thomas Cole at Crawford's Notch," _National Gallery of Art Report and Studies in the History of Art_ 2 (1968): 138. [2] Although there is no documentation, the Sturges family believed that Jonathan Sturges acquired the painting either directly from Rufus Lord or from his estate (letter of 10 November 1967 from Dudley Parker, in NGA curatorial files). Howard Merritt concurs in his letter of 29 October 1967 (in NGA curatorial files). [3] The date Mrs. Sturges sold the painting and to whom are unknown to the Sturgeses. Parker's letter of 10 November 1967 (in NGA curatorial files), states that it was sold "in the depth of the great depression." In a letter of 2 June 1967 (in NGA curatorial files) Robert C. Vose, Jr., states that Vose Galleries purchased the painting from LeRoy Ireland, who "got it from the collection of Mr. H. C. Sturges of Fairfield, Connecticut." [4] According to Vose (letter of 2 June 1967 in NGA curatorial files), the painting was sold to the Sanitary Scale Company while on view in the _Hudson River School_ exhibition at the AIC. [5] Letter of 13 June 1973 from John V. Farwell III (in NGA curatorial files).

Inscription

lower left: T. Cole. / 1839

NGA object ID 50727. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.