Catskill: Where Thomas Cole Invented American Landscape Painting

The village of Catskill sits at the mouth of Catskill Creek where it meets the Hudson River. European settlement here dates to sixteen eighty-four, when most of the village land was purchased from Native Americans. The town grew slowly through the colonial era and flourished after the Revolution as a Hudson River trading center.

But Catskill's most lasting contribution was artistic. In eighteen twenty-five, a young English-born painter named Thomas Cole visited the village and saw the mountains to the west for the first time. He was transfixed. Cole made his home here and spent the rest of his life painting the Hudson Valley and Catskill landscapes with a reverence that was entirely new in American art. His work launched the Hudson River School, the first major native art movement in the United States. His house and studios on Spring Street are now a National Historic Site, and the mountains he painted still rise behind the town exactly as he saw them.