The Perfect Hustle of Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole did not go to Italy just to look at old rocks. He went to sell an idea. He painted Cascatelli, Tivoli, Looking Towards Rome in 1832 because he knew exactly what the wealthy elites back home wanted to buy. They craved the romance of dead empires. They wanted crumbling ruins swallowed by untamed nature and Cole was happy to deliver.
He sketched the decaying architecture on site during his first grand European tour. He stood in the damp morning air and studied the way the light hit the Roman basin. When he got back to his studio he built the sky using thin layers of oil glaze. He created a misty morning haze that practically hangs in the room when you look at the canvas. The oil painting debuted at the National Academy of Design in 1833 and the buyers ate it up.
The irony is thick enough to cut with a palette knife. Cole painted the ghosts of Europe so he could afford to paint the living soul of America. The cash he made selling these moody Italian landscapes gave him the freedom to return home and paint the wild untouched wilderness he actually cared about. He turned the decay of Rome into a funding model for his own artistic freedom. It was a brilliant move. He gave them a dead world so he could afford to paint a new one.
References
Ferber, Linda S. The Hudson River School Nature and the American Vision. New York Historical Society 2009.
Parry, Ellwood C. The Art of Thomas Cole Ambition and Imagination. University of Delaware Press 1988.
Truettner, William H. and Alan Wallach. Thomas Cole Landscape into History. Yale University Press 1994.