An Italian Autumn

In 1844 Thomas Cole was back in the village of Catskill, two years home from his second long journey through Europe, and Italy kept turning up in his work. That June an 18-year-old from Hartford, Frederic Church, came to study with him, and spent the next two years in the studio where pictures like this one were made. This canvas found a buyer in 1848, the year Cole died. By 1863 it belonged to Robert Hoe of the New York printing-press firm, and when the Hoe pictures were sold in 1911 the Minneapolis lumberman T. B. Walker bought it. His collection grew into the Walker Art Center, which in time turned to modern art, and in 1989 it sent the Cole to Sotheby's in New York. It did not sell, and the Museum of Fine Arts bought it that same year. Cole painted a second version, now in Oklahoma City. On this one his name and the date, T. Cole 1844, are lettered on a rock at the bottom centre.