Portage Falls on the Genesee
Maker
Thomas Cole
(American, 1801 - 1848)
ClassificationsPAINTINGS
Dateca. 1839
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionscanvas: 84 1/4 × 61 1/4 in. (214 × 155.6 cm.)
frame: 98 1/2 × 76 1/2 × 7 1/2 in. (250.2 × 194.3 × 19.1 cm.)
Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation.
Label TextThis monumental painting by the Anglo-American artist Thomas Cole captures a sublime view of the Genesee River Valley near Portage Falls in Upstate New York, an area that was undergoing dramatic transformation with the construction of the Genesee Valley Canal. Commissioned in 1839 by Canal Commissioner Samuel B. Ruggles, Cole’s painting is a lyrical tribute to the natural world and a warning about humankind’s effects on it. The ominous storm clouds at the upper right portend the destructive advance of civilization, and the beginnings of a workers’ camp at the top of Portage Falls and “Hornby Lodge” perched atop the cliff, built by the canal’s contractor, Elisha Johnson, signal the impact of human engineering on the landscape. Cole painted a self-portrait of an artist sketching the vista amid autumnal hues, dwarfed by the scale of the gorge and the falls.The painting was presented to the governor of New York, William H. Seward, for the governor’s mansion in Albany, and it later hung in his personal residence in Auburn, New York, now the Seward House Museum. Seward owned the painting for the remainder of his life, during which he served as U.S. senator from New York and later as secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and subsequently under Andrew Johnson.
Status
On viewObject number2021.8
Exhibitions
