“The Falls at Kaaterskill”
Oh, the sublime!
“The Falls at Kaaterskill” is an oil on canvas painting by the Hudson River School artist, Thomas Cole, from 1826. Cole’s work is known for its realistic, yet romanticized depictions of untamed and wild American scenery. He wanted to portray and document the beauty of these landscapes before they disappeared from rapid industrialization and deforestation. Cole preferred straight landscapes, but when he did include figures, they were dominated by the grandeur of the surrounding landscape, such as in this piece here.
In this painting, Cole depicts the Kaaterskill Falls in upstate New York. There is a wall of striated stone over which a series of waterfalls pass before entering the stream below. Trees line the top and sides of the view. This is a dramatic picture. Dark skies above cast a shadow over half the scene, with the other half illuminated by spots of sunlight shown with bright and saturated color. A solitary figure is painted into the landscape, an indigenous American. He stands, holding his spear, silhouetted by the shadow behind him. The sun passes through the mist of the falls, but not before creating a subtle rainbow to the left of the figure. The deciduous trees exhibit their autumn colors of red and orange while the evergreen trees remain steadfast in their green. Cole’s signature dead trees and limbs are represented along the bottom of the canvas by several trees standing and strewn across the path of the water.
Cole, like most people, first heard of Kaaterskill Falls in Washington Irving’s story, Rip Van Winkle, published in 1819. The main character, Rip, encountered the falls after waking up from his long sleep. While searching out the amphitheater where he encountered strange little men the night before, Rip Van Winkle instead found this:
“The rocks presented a high, impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest.”
The “Rip Van Winkle” story inspired Cole and a new wave of tourists to head upstate and seek the land that Irving had described. In 1826, Cole went on a trip to upstate New York which was financed by his patron, George W. Bruen. The Kaaterskill Falls and Catskill Mountains were already a popular tourist destination for those seeking to get out of the city and into nature, but it became much more so after the publication of Irving’s story. Cole created at least three paintings of the falls in 1826, including “Kaaterskill Falls”, “From the Top of Kaaterskill Falls”, and “The Falls of Kaaterskill” presented here.
Cole’s creative process is well-documented for this piece. He created several stages of sketches to determine the composition and colors of the final painting, which thankfully survive to this day. His initial sketch was a rough outline of features done en plein air, with added notations of desired color and effect. Visible are several structures and a fence along the top. A person is drawn in the middle section of the falls, seated on a rock with one leg outstretched. This pencil and paper sketch, “From the Top of Kaaterskill Falls”, is in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
In the studio, he then created a pencil, charcoal, and chalk sketch, titled “Double Waterfall–Kaaterskill Falls”, also in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts. This sketch contains the same elements in the first sketch that were extant during Cole’s visit, but which he chose to omit from the final painting, such as the buildings and fence at the top. The composition of his vision is much clearer, with the falls highlighted with white chalk. Two figures are drawn in the middle section of the falls.
Next, Cole created an oil sketch painting, fine tuning his composition and visualizing his colors. He omitted one of the structures and the fence along the top, but kept one building in the scene, perhaps for scale. No figures are present in the landscape. “Kauterskill Falls”, from 1826, is in the collections of the Graham Williford Foundation for American Art, and on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art.
In the final version, Cole decided to omit any signs of modern intrusions on the landscape, including the buildings at the top and the fence. He also added elements. He filled the top of the cliff wall with trees across the entirety of it, which clearly were not present during his visit. He added a solitary figure, an indigenous American, to add scale and dimension to the scene. It also created a more wild and sublime landscape.
Thomas Cole wrote about his creative process in a letter to his patron, Robert Gilmor Jr.:
“In speaking of sketching from nature I believe I have before mentioned that mine are generally mere outlines and I have found that for me the mode I have adopted is the best—others may pursue a different course to advantage. My desire and endeavor is always to get the objects of nature, sky, rocks, trees, etc—as strongly impressed on my mind as possible & by looking intently on an object for twenty minutes I can go to my room and paint it with much more truth, than I could if I employed several hours on the spot.”
“The Falls at Kaaterskill” is currently in the collections of The Warner Foundation, based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They loan their art out to various institutions across the United States.
For more on Thomas Cole, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
