Sunday Salons are gatherings at the home of Thomas Cole, with guest speakers leading discussions on topics relating to the Hudson River School, America’s first major art movement. The public is invited for wine, cheese, and lively conversation once per month at Cedar Grove, the birthplace of American landscape painting. Sundays at 2pm. Tickets are $8 per person or $6 for members. Admission is first-come-first-served.
During the reception following each talk, a new exhibition will be on view in the 2nd floor Beecher Gallery, displaying historic wallpapers from the collection of Michael Levinson. The exhibition explores Thomas Cole’s work as a young man in the wallpaper business, demonstating the types of designs he might have been exposed to and influenced by.
January 10 Patricia Junker
Sacred to the Memory of Thomas Cole: Charles Herbert Moore and his Views of Cedar Grove
Patricia Junker, Curator of American Art at the Seattle Art Museum, explores Charles Herbert Moore’s affection for Thomas Cole, evident in his captivating paintings of Cole’s house and studio. Moore rented Cole’s studio in the early 1860s, making Catskill a meeting place for a new generation of landscape painters. While much has been made of the Pre-Raphaelites’ dismissal of Cole’s visionary tendencies, Moore warmly embraced his memory. The artist who worked in Cole’s studio could not help but evoke the late artist’s spirit—enlisting the language of Cole’s art to create richly symbolic landscape compositions.
February 7 Katherine Manthorne
Eliza Pratt Greatorex: “First Artist of Her Sex in America”*
Katherine Manthorne, Professor of Modern Art of the Americas (1750-1950) at City University of New York, reveals highlights from her upcoming biography on one of the most fascinating, least-known Hudson River School painters: Eliza Pratt Greatorex. Focusing on her extraordinary life – the first female to be admitted to the National Academy of Design, one of the first artists to capture images of New York City’s historic sites before they were destroyed, and a world traveler who made her living as an artist/teacher while raising her children by herself – this talk is a wonderful prelude to our 2010 exhibition, “Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School.” The title of the talk is a phrase dubbed by a 19th-century critic.
March 14 Linda S. Ferber
The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision
Linda S. Ferber, Senior Art Historian and Museum Director Emerita of the New-York Historical Society, and former Chair of the Department of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum, returns to the Cole House with her new book, The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision. Capturing the New-York Historical Society’s world-renowned Hudson River School collection in book form for the first time, Dr. Ferber’s book features all the greatest artists of the group including Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Jasper Cropsey, Asher B. Durand, Sanford Gifford, and John F. Kensett. One of the Cole House’s most popular speakers, Dr. Ferber will sign copies of her book after her talk.
April 11 Stephen Hannock
Thomas Cole with a Power Sander
One of the most exciting artists of our time – called “the consummate landscape painter” – Stephen Hannock began his artistic career near the site of Thomas Cole’s famous 1836 painting, the Oxbow. Cole has been “a reference point” for Hannock, whose virtuosic use of light – as well as a power sander – has landed his paintings in museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Art Historian Jason Rosenfeld describes Hannock’s work as “both distinctively modern as well as reflective of landscape traditions…-.Hannock, in his radical technique is a true American luminist. His paintings, multi-layered in both surface and meaning, radiate in a manner that connects past and present.” After his talk, Mr. Hannock will sign copies of his new monograph.