The Cross in the Wilderness

In 1845 Thomas Cole took his subject from a poem by the English writer Felicia Hemans, published in 1827, in which a Native American chief grieves at the grave of the missionary who first brought him the Christian word. Cole set the scene in the Catskill Mountains, where he lived, and made it round, a small circle of autumn woods and low sun opening in a painted stone wall. In the upper left corner of that wall he lettered the title and the poet's name. When the picture entered the Louvre, an old frame with a round opening covered the corners and the inscription with them. In 1975 a Paris dealer was taking it out of France, and the museum bought it as it passed through customs, a rare American painting in its collection. The chief sits near the stone cross with his head lowered.