Did America’s great landscape painter fear progress and hate democracy?
Thomas Cole, American Moralist
“What most disturbed him, and seemed symptomatic of a larger malaise, was the government-fueled drive toward land-grabbing and wilderness-taming at any cost. Virtually from his Catskill front porch he could see forests being rapidly and randomly leveled. For Cole, who identified personally, emotionally, with every living element in a landscape, such sights were an assault.”
Copeland – Because I’m Worth It