L'ansa del fiume

Cole painted this in 1836, at a moment when Americans were arguing about how fast to clear and settle the land, and he built that argument right into the canvas. He climbed Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts and painted the great U-shaped bend of the Connecticut River below, but he split the view in two. On the left a thunderstorm still rakes dark wilderness, blasted trees and rough hills. On the right the storm has passed and the valley opens into sunlit, ordered farmland, tidy fields and rising smoke. Down in the middle foreground, tiny, Cole painted himself at his easel, turning to look back at us with his brush in hand.