View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow)
Artist: Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole's 1836 canvas looks out from Mount Holyoke over the Connecticut River near Northampton, Massachusetts, just after a thunderstorm. The scene splits between storm-darkened wilderness and a sunlit, cultivated valley, and the painter himself appears at his easel on the rocky promontory in the foreground. This short tour follows that division and the figure who observes it, using only what the painting's institutional record establishes.
