Provenance
The artist [1801-1848]; his estate, until 1857;[1] Robert M. Olyphant [1824-1918], New York, by 1867;[2] (his sale, by Robert Somerville at Chickering Hall, New York, 18-19 December 1877, 1st day, no. 64, as _The Hurricane_);purchased through (Samuel P. Avery, New York) by Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington;[3] acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] According to a receipt of sale signed by Maria Cole in the collection of miscellaneous Thomas Cole papers at the Detroit Institute of Art. The receipt reads: "Rec'd Catskill Jan. 10, 1857 of Mr. F. E. Church seven hundred dollars in full for Picture 'Tornado in an American Forest' sold to Mess. Olyphant & Son. Maria Cole." Cole's only pupil, Frederic E. Church, apparently tried to sell the painting for Cole's widow. _The Crayon_, 3 January 1855, reported that the picture was in Church's studio at the Tenth Street Studio Building in 1855.
[2] The painting was published as being in the Olyphant collection by Henry Tuckerman, _Book of the Artists_, New York, 1867: 40.
[3] According to the Register of Paintings Belonging to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1869-1946, the painting was received from Avery on 26 December 1877 (Series 1, Box: 135, Volume: 1. Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art + Design, Corcoran Gallery of Art registrar's office records, COR0005.1-RG. Special Collections Research Center, The George Washington University; digitized online and copy in NGA curatorial files). That he was acting as agent for the Corcoran Gallery at the Olyphant sale is suggested by an annotated copy of the auction catalogue in which the buyer of the painting is listed as the Corcoran. (_Catalogue, Mr. Robert M. Olyphant's collection of paintings by American artists_, New York: Somerville Art Gallery, 1877, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson.) The Corcoran register lists six paintings from the Olyphant sale received from Avery.
Accession Number
2014.136.117
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 117.79 × 164.15 cm (46 3/8 × 64 5/8 in.) | framed: 151.13 × 198.12 × 13.34 cm (59 1/2 × 78 × 5 1/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund)
Tags
Painting Neoclassical & Romantic (1751–1850) Oil Painting Canvas American
Background & Context
Background Story
Tornado in an American Forest (1831) is one of Thomas Cole's most dramatic landscapes, depicting the terrifying power of a tornado tearing through an American wilderness. The painting belongs to Cole's series of wilderness subjects that established the Hudson River School's engagement with the American landscape as a subject of both beauty and sublimity. The 1831 date places this during the period when Cole was developing the philosophical framework that would define American landscape painting: the idea that the American wilderness revealed God's presence through its untamed magnificence. The tornado—.force of nature that no human could control or resist—represented the sublime dimension of the American landscape that European scenery, long tamed by civilization, could not provide. Cole's treatment of the tornado's destruction—trees uprooted, branches scattered, the forest floor littered with devastation—demonstrates his ability to render destruction with the same careful attention he brought to the pristine wilderness. The painting also reveals Cole's concern with the American landscape's vulnerability: the wilderness that seemed eternal could be destroyed in an instant, and the tornado's violence prefigured the destruction that human settlement would bring. The contrast between the devastated foreground and the untouched forest beyond suggests that nature's destruction is cyclical rather than final—a theological argument embedded in landscape painting.
Cultural Impact
Cole's Tornado influenced how the American sublime was represented in art, establishing the destructive aspect of nature as a legitimate subject for landscape painting. The painting influenced later American artists who similarly found sublimity in natural disaster, from Bierstadt's storms to Twachtman's floods. The tornado subject influenced how American wilderness was culturally understood, connecting its beauty to the destructive forces that shaped it.
Why It Matters
This painting matters because it reveals the dark side of the American wilderness that Cole's more serene landscapes sometimes conceal. The tornado argues that nature's sublimity includes destruction as well as beauty, and that the American landscape's significance lies in its capacity to overwhelm human pretensions rather than merely to please human senses.
