We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”

A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch)

Thomas Cole

We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”

Colors in this work

Details
Artist
Thomas Cole
Date
1839
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 102 x 155.8 cm (40 3/16 x 61 5/16 in.) framed: 135.9 x 189.6 x 14 cm (53 1/2 x 74 5/8 x 5 1/2 in.)
Department
CAB
Holding institution
National Gallery of Art
Palette

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Image provider
national-gallery-of-art
License
CC0-1.0
Credit
Andrew W. Mellon Fund

Art Genome Taxonomy

10 tags

Subject Matter

  • Landscapes Both · 100%

    The title identifies a mountain pass and the image visibly centers on a mountainous natural environment with forests, rocky terrain, and a clearing.

  • Atmospheric Landscapes Both · 97%

    The painting visibly includes cloud, haze, and changing light around the mountain, while the catalog describes storm clouds moving around the peak and warm light across the scene.

  • Modes of Transportation Both · 97%

    A horse and rider are clearly visible in the foreground, and the catalog also describes a distant horse-drawn carriage traveling along the road.

  • Rural Life Both · 94%

    The clearing contains a house, another small structure, a road, a rider, children, a dog, and a distant carriage, establishing a sparsely settled rural setting.

  • The Sublime Interpretive · 92%

    The immense mountain dominates the small figures, buildings, and trees, supporting an interpretation centered on the sublime contrast between human scale and natural grandeur.

Visual Qualities

  • Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 94%

    Scarlet, orange, gold, and green autumn foliage is contrasted with blue sky, gray clouds, and warm brown rock.

  • Highly Detailed Visual · 93%

    The painting contains extensive descriptive detail in the rocky terrain, trees, foliage, deadwood, structures, figures, and foreground vegetation.

Medium and Techniques

  • Painting Metadata · 99%

    The National Gallery of Art classifies the work as a painting.

  • Oil Painting Metadata · 99%

    The catalog identifies the medium as oil on canvas.

Time Periods

Source & rights

Thomas Cole. A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch). Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

High-resolution sources

Catalog record ↗ Image source ↗ Image license ↗ Image-use terms ↗ Catalog metadata terms ↗

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