Views Across Frenchman’s Bay from Mt. Desert Island, After a Squall 1845

Thomas Cole, a leading figure in the Hudson River School, painted “Views Across Frenchman’s Bay from Mt. Desert Island, After a Squall” at a time when the American landscape was seen as a symbol of national identity and promise. This rendering of the untamed beauty of Maine’s coast wrestles with themes of nature, expansion, and the sublime. Cole, an English immigrant, saw in the American landscape a unique spiritual quality, one not yet marred by European civilization. Yet, even as he celebrated this ‘untouched’ wilderness, we must acknowledge that the concept of an empty landscape conveniently ignored the Indigenous people who had long inhabited these lands. Cole’s work invites us to consider the complex relationship between romanticism, nationalism, and colonialism, as well as whose stories are foregrounded and whose are erased in our collective narratives. It asks us to reflect on the narratives of progress and expansion that continue to shape our understanding of the American landscape.