A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House, Catskill Mountains, Morning

A tiny figure in a blue coat stands on a rock ledge at the bottom of this scene, hands clasped behind his back, taking in the same view we are. Behind him the land drops away into a basin holding two lakes, and off to the left, perched on a cliff edge, sits a small white building. That is the Catskill Mountain House, a hotel that opened in 1824 and became one of America's first tourist destinations. Guests arrived by steamboat up the Hudson and then by carriage up the mountain, often rising before dawn to watch the sun come up over the valley below. Thomas Cole has painted that very hour: the light is still low, the far ridges are hazy, and mist drifts along the slopes.

Cole is usually credited with starting the Hudson River School, the first homegrown American landscape movement, and he lived in the village of Catskill just below these peaks. He had complicated feelings about scenes like this one. In his writings he worried about axes and development chewing through American wilderness, yet here he includes the hotel, the roads, and the sightseer without much fuss. The twisted dead tree in the left foreground is a device he used often, a reminder that nature keeps its own cycles of growth and decay regardless of who comes to admire it. Painted in 1844, four years before his death, this is Cole in a relaxed mood, recording a place he knew by heart rather than building one of his grand allegories.