Thomas Cole
American, 1801­1848
Niagara Falls
1830
Oil on panel
48 x 60.7 cm
Friends of American Art Collection, 1946.396

Cole came from England to America—the New World—in 1819 when he was eighteen. In this painting the artist portrays a uniquely American scene: the red autumn trees are sugar maples, a tree that grows only in North America; on the cliff before the falls are Indians, an entirely new race of people to the transplanted Europeans. But the focus of this work is the falls. To Cole, this mighty rush of water represented the grandeur of creation and the vast wilderness of the new world.