Search Results:

Viewing Record 1 of 1
 


Maker(s):Cole, Thomas
Culture:American, born in England (1801-1848)
Title:Daniel Boone at His Cabin at Great Osage Lake
Date Made:1826
Type:Painting
Materials:oil on canvas
Place Made:United States; Missouri; Femme Osage
Measurements:Frame: 45 1/8 in x 49 1/2 in x 3 1/4 in; 114.6 cm x 125.7 cm x 8.3 cm; Stretcher: 38 1/4 in x 42 5/8 in; 97.2 cm x 108.3 cm
Narrative Inscription:  On verso of canvas: "Boone sitting at the door of his cabin. Thos. Cole 1826."
Accession Number:  AC P.1939.7
Credit Line:Museum Purchase
Museum Collection:  Mead Art Museum at Amherst College
P-1939-7.jpg

Description:
Wild romanticized landscape with a lake in the middle distance, overhung by mountain precipice. In the far distance, a range of blue mountains. In the right foreground, under a stormy sky, is a small log cabin surrounded by trees, and before it a man sits, rifle in hand, and a dog by his side. A dead deer lies behind him. This group is balanced in the right foreground by a dark overhanging precipice and a tall tree.

Label Text:
Cole’s Romantic painting portrays the popular frontiersman Daniel Boone (American, 1734–1820), imagined outside a rustic home within an invented landscape (likely inspired by Cole’s sketching trips in New York). The painting embodies the English-born artist’s conservationist beliefs and conflicting support of development through the picturing of wilderness as a key national resource. Cole represents Boone as an elderly pioneer, already mythologized for exploits that were buoyed by a belief in the divine right of White Americans to expand their control over the land and deny the histories and presence of Native Americans already living there.

Cole created his earliest landscape paintings soon after he moved to New York in 1825, a time when cultural producers and industrialists in the region sought to define American identity and a national art.

Lisa Crossman, 2020

Tags:
landscapes; men; dogs; animals; architecture; storms; trees; mountains; water; weapons; hunting; deer

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+P.1939.7

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.

Viewing Record 1 of 1