Portage Falls on the Genesee

Maker Thomas Cole (American, 1801 - 1848)

Collections

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Dateca. 1839

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 84 1/4 × 61 1/4 in. (214 × 155.6 cm.) frame: 98 1/2 × 76 1/2 × 7 1/2 in. (250.2 × 194.3 × 19.1 cm.)

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of The Ahmanson Foundation.

Status

On view

Label TextThis monumental painting by the Anglo-American artist Thomas Cole captures a sublime view of the Genesee River Valley near Portage Falls in Upstate New York, an area that was undergoing dramatic transformation with the construction of the Genesee Valley Canal. Commissioned in 1839 by Canal Commissioner Samuel B. Ruggles, Cole’s painting is a lyrical tribute to the natural world and a warning about humankind’s effects on it. The ominous storm clouds at the upper right portend the destructive advance of civilization, and the beginnings of a workers’ camp at the top of Portage Falls and “Hornby Lodge” perched atop the cliff, built by the canal’s contractor, Elisha Johnson, signal the impact of human engineering on the landscape. Cole painted a self-portrait of an artist sketching the vista amid autumnal hues, dwarfed by the scale of the gorge and the falls.

The painting was presented to the governor of New York, William H. Seward, for the governor’s mansion in Albany, and it later hung in his personal residence in Auburn, New York, now the Seward House Museum. Seward owned the painting for the remainder of his life, during which he served as U.S. senator from New York and later as secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and subsequently under Andrew Johnson.

Object number2021.8

Exhibitions

PST Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis