A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains

A storm is pulling away over Crawford Notch in New Hampshire, and the last of the autumn light catches the trees just as a lone horseman gallops across the clearing. Thomas Cole painted this in 1839 after visiting the famous mountain pass, a place that had become one of America's first tourist attractions. The white building on the left is Abel Crawford's inn, where travelers stopped before tackling the road through the gap. The tiny figure riding toward it, hat in the air, may be carrying mail. Cole has pushed the mountains up so steeply that the people and buildings shrink to specks, which is exactly the effect he wanted.

Cole is usually credited with starting the Hudson River School, the first real movement in American landscape painting, and he liked his scenery to carry a message. The notch had a dark reputation: in 1826 a landslide roared down the slope and killed the entire Willey family, who had run outside for safety while their house survived untouched. Visitors came by the hundreds to see the spot. The broken, bleached tree trunks in the foreground, cut stumps on one side and storm-shattered wood on the other, are Cole's shorthand for the tug between wilderness and settlement that worried him all his life. He thought America was clearing its forests too fast, and he kept saying so in paint.