Among members of the Hudson River School of painting, Sanford Robinson Gifford has long been considered one of the most brilliant painters of light and air.
The Thomas Cole House: Birthplace of the Hudson River School
The English-born artist Thomas Cole (1801–1848) tolerated no ill comparisons to his adopted home in upstate New York. As he wrote to a friend in 1842: “Must I tell you that neither the Alps nor the Apennines, no, nor even Aetna itself, have dimmed, in my eyes, the beauty of our own Catskills?”