Thomas Cole (1801–1848)
Untitled Landscape (Sunrise in the Clove), n.d.
Oil on canvas, 5½ × 8½ in
Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Gift of Edith Cole Silberstein, TC.64.11.16

This is a small oil sketch that Thomas Cole made looking east from the Catskills to the Hudson River Valley. In the distance one can see the Hudson River as the sun rises through the clove. This was a favorite hike of Cole’s, and on October 9, 1838, he wrote in his journal: “We entered that beautiful Pass through the Mountains called the Clove, on either hand the mountains rise majestically thousands of feet, on the left the High Peak, on the right the South Mountain on whose side the sun shone with golden splendour + the huge precipices that rise a thousand feet above the village of Palensville (now Irvingsville) [sic] frowned on the valley like towers + battlements of Cyclopean structure.”

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