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Two thick, twisting, splintered tree trunks with broken branches stripped of leaves are set against a dark, wooded landscape beneath a nearly black sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is dominated by coffee brown and tan, dark pewter and smoke gray, and olive green. The two trunks, set to our left of center, are the most brightly lit objects in the landscape, presumably lit from the break in the clouds in the upper right corner. More trees create a screen across the painting beyond the tree trunks. Though nearly swallowed in shadow, a couple of taller trees in the distance show that they bend nearly horizontally in a strong wind. The left half of the sky above is almost black, and it lightens a bit toward the break in the clouds to our right. Only closer inspection reveals a person standing near the base of the trunk to our right, possibly bracing against its trunk. Their dark hair blows back from their face and their navy blue jacket is lifted in the wind. The artist signed and dated the work as if he wrote it on a rock at the lower center of the painting: “T Cole 183,” the last digit missing.

Thomas Cole

Tornado in an American Forest, 1831

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 117.79 × 164.15 cm (46 3/8 × 64 5/8 in.)

framed: 151.13 × 198.12 × 13.34 cm (59 1/2 × 78 × 5 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund)

Accession Number

2014.136.117

Artists / Makers

Thomas Cole (artist) American, 1801 - 1848

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower center, last digit illegible: T. Cole / 183[?]

Inscription Notes

[2] The catalogue lists the painting as "dated 1833," although the entry states the painting is signed and dated "1835." The provenance given is in error; the painting was confused with Francis Alexander's painting

Provenance

The artist [1801-1848]; his estate, until 1857;[1] Robert M. Olyphant [1824-1918], New York, by 1867;[2] (his sale, by Robert Somerville at Chickering Hall, New York, 18-19 December 1877, 1st day, no. 64, as The Hurricane);purchased through (Samuel P. Avery, New York) by Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington;[3] acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

[1] According to a receipt of sale signed by Maria Cole in the collection of miscellaneous Thomas Cole papers at the Detroit Institute of Art. The receipt reads: "Rec'd Catskill Jan. 10, 1857 of Mr. F. E. Church seven hundred dollars in full for Picture 'Tornado in an American Forest' sold to Mess. Olyphant & Son. Maria Cole." Cole's only pupil, Frederic E. Church, apparently tried to sell the painting for Cole's widow. The Crayon, 3 January 1855, reported that the picture was in Church's studio at the Tenth Street Studio Building in 1855.

[2] The painting was published as being in the Olyphant collection by Henry Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, New York, 1867: 40.

[3] According to the Register of Paintings Belonging to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1869-1946, the painting was received from Avery on 26 December 1877 (Series 1, Box: 135, Volume: 1. Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art + Design, Corcoran Gallery of Art registrar's office records, COR0005.1-RG. Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University; digitized online and copy in NGA curatorial files). That he was acting as agent for the Corcoran Gallery at the Olyphant sale is suggested by an annotated copy of the auction catalogue in which the buyer of the painting is listed as the Corcoran. (Catalogue, Mr. Robert M. Olyphant's collection of paintings by American artists, New York: Somerville Art Gallery, 1877, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson.) The Corcoran register lists six paintings from the Olyphant sale received from Avery.

Associated Names

Corcoran Gallery of Art
Olyphant, Robert M.

Exhibition History

1831: Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street Gallery, London, Spring 1831.

1833: Possibly Eighth Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, 8 May - 6 July 1833, no. 49, as A Tornado in the Wilderness.[1]

1865: Artists' Fund Society of New York, Sixth Annual Exhibition at the National Academy of Design, National Academy of Design, New York, 1865, no. 210, as The Storm.

1876: Centennial Loan Exhibition of Paintings, Selected from the Private Art Galleries, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1876, no. 241.

1893: Exhibition of American Retrospective Art, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, no. 2810, as The Tornado.

1916: Extended loan for use by The Louise Home, National Cathedral School for Girls, Washington, 18 December 1916 - 3 December 1934.

1940: Survey of American Paintings, Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 24 October - 15 December 1940, no. 106, as Tornado.

1941: The Works of Thomas Cole, 1801-1848, Albany Institute of History and Art, 1 November - 15 December 1941, unnumbered checklist, as The Tornado.

1949: Thomas Cole: One Hundred Years Later, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1948-1949, no. 25, repro., as The Tornado.

1963: The Romantic Century, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 22 June - 9 September 1963.

1965: Thomas Cole: Paintings by an American Romanticist, Baltimore Museum of Art, 26 January - 28 February 1965, no. 13, as The Tornado.

1968: Jasper F. Cropsey, 1823-1900: A Retrospective View of America's Painter of Autumn, J. Millard Tawes Fine Arts Center, University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, 2 February - 3 March 1968, repro., as Tornado.

1969: Thomas Cole, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica; Albany Institute of History and Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1969, no. 28, repro., as Tornado.[2]

1971: The Beckoning Land, Nature and the American Artist: a Selection of Nineteenth Century Paintings, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 17 April - 13 June 1971, no. 14, repro., as Tornado.

1971: Wilderness, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 9 October - 14 November 1971, no. 72, as Tornado (organized by the National Endowment for the Arts).

1978: The American Landscape Tradition, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 31 January - 31 August 1978, unpublished checklist.

1979: Salvator Rosa in America, Wellesley College Art Museum, 20 April - 5 June 1979, no. 79, repro., as Tornado.

1980: La Pintura de los Estados Unidos de Museos de la Ciudad de Washington, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico, 15 November 1980 - 6 January 1981, unnumbered catalogue, repro., as Tornado.

1994: Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, National Museum of American Art, Washington; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; New-York Historical Society, 1994-1995, unnumbered checklist, as A Tornado in the Wilderness.

Exhibition History Notes

[1] Ellwood C. Parry III, in The Art of Thomas Cole, Newark, 1988: 132, wrote that the painting exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1833 was not this painting, but rather a version of the same subject that the artist sent to his friend Francis Alexander in 1835, which Parry identifies as The Whirlwind, currently unlocated.

Bibliography

2011: Cash, Sarah, ed. Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Washington, 2011: 30, 292, repro.