View of the Round-Top in the Catskill Mountains

In the summer of 1827 Cole was painting a set of five views of the northern Catskills and the Hudson to order. Historians in the town of Cairo, New York, single this one out as the only view of the five that looks toward the river from the west. Cole took his stand high on the slope of Blackhead Mountain and looked down over the hamlets of Purling, Round Top and South Cairo to the Hudson far off in the morning light, which is why the picture is also called Sunny Morning on the Hudson. He was 26 and had been painting these mountains for only two years. In 1828 the panel was bought by Henry Ward of New York, whose brother Samuel headed the banking house of Prime, Ward and King. In the Wards' house on Bond Street the attic was turned into a studio for his wife's sister, the miniature painter Anne Hall. The picture stayed in the family for about a hundred years, passing from widow to son to cousins, until a New York gallery sold it in 1934. Cole signed it at the lower centre with his surname alone.