OVERVIEW

ON TREES: Georgia O’Keeffe and Thomas Cole explores how Thomas Cole (1801-1848) depicted trees in the year of his transformational first visit to Catskill, NY in 1825 and how Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) did so in her pivotal first visit to New Mexico in 1929. 

The exhibition features two, stunning, American landscape oil paintings that have never been displayed together before:

• “Hunters in a Landscape” by Thomas Cole dates to c. 1825, the year of his first visit to Catskill, a trip that changed the course of American art. It is in the permanent collection of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site; a gift of Dr. Susan Gates Austin Warner, whose late husband Jack Warner was a visionary collector of American art.
• “Dead Tree Bear Lake Taos” by Georgia O’Keeffe dates to 1929, when she visited New Mexico for the first time. O’Keeffe’s trip, like Cole’s, would have a transformational effect on her artistic practice. The painting is on loan from Art Bridges.

These paintings reflect how the anthropomorphic qualities of trees captured the attention and creativity of two iconic painters at the time of their first visits to the landscapes that would define their work thereafter – and have a lasting impact on American art. Additional paintings and drawings by Cole will augment the show’s exploration.

The exhibition is presented in conjunction with COLE 200, this year’s 200th Anniversary celebration of Cole’s first trip to Catskill, NY, in 1825. The paintings that Thomas Cole made of the Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountains launched not only his career, but the major art movement of the United States known as the Hudson River School of American landscape painting.

PRESS RELEASE

These works of Thomas Cole and Georgia O’Keeffe have not previously been presented together, but there are profound connections that this exhibition reveals. First, the artists, working about a century apart, share a fascination for trees and animate them with rich allegorical meanings; second, they both depicted trees during their first visits to areas of the country that would go on to shape, not only their careers, but American art as we experience it today. This intersection is eye-opening, with the work of each artist informing the experience of viewing the work of the other.

—Kate Menconeri, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, Contemporary Art, and Fellowship, Thomas Cole National Historic Site

The link between Thomas Cole and Georgia O’Keeffe is indirect but important. While O’Keeffe is mainly identified with twentieth-century modernism, both European and American, her work also reflects American nineteenth-century thought regarding nature’s organic forms. Cole’s art embodied such thought, and the trees in the two exhibited works point to an intriguing relationship between his ideas about nature and those of O’Keeffe.

—H. Daniel Peck, Interdisciplinary Scholar and the John Guy Vassar Professor Emeritus of English, Vassar College, who has published on both O’Keeffe and Cole

EXHIBITION OBJECTS – Selection

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Dead Tree Bear Lake Taos, 1929, oil on canvas, 32 x 17 in., 34 x 19 in., Art Bridges

Explore the exhibition with our free digital guide on Bloomberg Connects:

On Trees and COLE 200 is made possible through support from Art Bridges. Funded in Part by the Maurice D. Hinchey Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area.