Thomas Cole

120 pp. Cole, Thomas (01 February 1801–11 February 1848), landscape painter, was born in Bolton-le-Moor, Lancashire, England, the son of James Cole, a muslin manufacturer, and Mary (maiden name unknown). His parents encouraged his artistic tendencies but were incapable of providing him with an artistic education. For a short time he attended a boarding school in Chester and at about age fourteen went to work as an engraver at a calico printworks in Chorley. James Cole's business failed in the depression following the end of the Napoleonic wars, and in 1818 the Cole family immigrated to the United States. Cole spent his first year in the New World working as an engraver in Philadelphia. Joining his family in Steubenville, Ohio, he began a career as an itinerant portraitist and artistic jack-of-all-trades. In 1823 he moved back to Philadelphia, where he studied the paintings on view at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, including landscapes by Thomas Birch and Thomas Doughty, and drew from the academy's cast collection.--American National Biography