Pictures at an Exhibition, Part Two – Thomas Cole at Oak Road
Last week we described a Thomas Cole painting that we saw at Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole Historic Site. No one knew where its image had been done. We studied it and decided that it was based on a sketch done at the site of the now long-gone Rip Van Winkle House along the Old Mountain Turnpike that once ascended the Catskill Front to the Mountain House Hotel. Thomas Cole is widely regarded as the founder, or at least the co-founder of the Hudson River School of Art. That’s, quite possibly, New York State’s most important contribution to American or even world culture. So, this is important art and as much as possible should be known about it, especially where it was sketched.
While we were at Cedar Grove, we spotted another one of Cole’s paintings. See our first illustration. This one had the vague title of “Catskills Scene.” That ambiguity betrays the lack of knowing exactly where it had been sketched. Cole painted all over the eastern Catskills and Hudson Valley. But where had he done this one? We, of course, wanted to figure that out. But how do you do that? Do you just go exploring? That might take forever. Or is there a better way? We love this sort of challenge, and we think that this particular one is something that perhaps only a geologist can solve. So, we set about going to work. There is a lot of geology here to work with. We guessed right away that the image was looking up at the Catskill Front from somewhere at the bottom of the Hudson Valley. In the left distance is a steep slope which appears to be the south facing side of a sizable clove. That had to be either Kaaterskill or Plattekill Cloves. Then there is a good-sized stream in the foreground and that might help. But, and this might surprise you, there is that flat landscape in the middle distance; that, it turned out, would help the most. Only an experienced geologist would recognize that this, in the Hudson Valley would be the bottom of an ice age lake.
So, the evidence was adding up and it was substantial. We were looking for a view that took in the floor of a glacial lake near the bottom of a large clove along the Catskill Front. Well, we are pros; we were quick to know the answer; in fact, we instantly concluded that this was a lake called Glacial Lake Kiskatom and it lay at the bottom of Kaaterskill Clove.
But, where precisely had Cole actually sketched? We needed to find a stream that passed by just east of Lake Kiskatom. We got our maps out and found an unnamed creek right next to Oak Road, along Rte. 32 at the northern edge of Saugerties. We went as quickly as Google Earth could get us there. We found that Oak Road was a place lost in time. It was a very old neighborhood with ancient stone houses that might well have been there even long before Cole visited. We looked west and there it was: we found the stream and a view of Lake Kiskatom, as well as Kaaterskill Clove. See our second illustration. This was truly an exciting moment of discovery.
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That mound of earth on the right of Cole’s painting is not there. And the real-world stream is smaller than Cole’s river. Artists are allowed such liberties. But everything else fits – perfectly. We thus believe that we have located still another site where Thomas Cole sketched. That’s two of them in the last two weeks; that means a lot to us. We walked down towards the creek and did a little exploring. We debated the matter and then finally agreed on a spot that we thought might have been the very one where Cole had worked. We took turns sitting where we thought he had sat. Then came an awesome thought: we realized that we were probably the first people to do this since Cole himself had come here almost two centuries ago. It made for a very good day!
Contact the authors at randjtitus@prodigy.net. Join their facebook page “The Catskill Geologist.” Read their blogs at “thecatskillgeologist.com.”
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