Unravelling the Stark Message in this Landscape Masterpiece

Shifting fortunes told by a classic work of art

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow (1836) by Thomas Cole. Oil on canvas. 130.8 × 193 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S. Image source Wikimedia Commons

One of the things that art can do is serve as a space where ideas are inscribed and explored. It has the power to portray human activity as either beautiful or destructive — and it is this contrast that the English-American artist Thomas Cole presented so well in this work.