The New Student's Reference Work/Cole, Thomas

Cole, Thomas, an American painter, was born at Bolton-le Moors, England, Feb. 1, 1801. At Steubenville, O., where his father settled after emigrating to America, the sight of a wandering portrait-painter, with his canvas and colors, made him decide to become a painter. He painted portraits in several Ohio cities with no success, after which he set up as a landscape-painter at Philadelphia in 1823. Here he had a hard time, glad even to ornament chairs for a living. But in 1825 he painted several landscapes from sketches he had made in the Catskills, which gave him a name among artists. Prosperity at once followed and never afterward forsook him. Among his finest pictures are Mt. Ætna, View of the White Mountains and The Voyage of Life, the last a series of four pictures representing childhood, youth, manhood and old age. He died at Catskill, N. Y., Feb. 11, 1848.