American Lake Scene, 1846, oil on canvas, 18" x 24", framed by Gill & Lagodich for the Mint Museum of Art, c. 1820-40 American Cole-style painting frame; gilded applied composition ornament and applied netting over wood; swept profile; cartouche corners and centers; French-Revival influenced style; molding width: 4-1/8”  Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William S. Lowndes, 1976.25

"Thomas Cole was a pioneer of American landscape painting. Seeking to raise the status of his genre, he argued that a landscape could be the entire subject of a work of art, not merely backdrop for a story: a view that can be linked to America’s growing concern with the spiritual and therapeutic pleasures of the natural world. Combining a scenic (probably invented) view with a lone Native American figure, this painting is one of a number of works that Cole created towards the end of his life that addressed the issue of the passage of time. The figure can be interpreted not as savage—noble or otherwise, a stereotype that was dominant in then-current representations of Native Americans—but rather as contemplative, pausing to consider the passage of time, symbolized here by the setting sun."