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Oct 24, 2018

View of Florence

1837

Thomas Cole

(American, 1801–1848)

America, 19th century

Oil on canvas

Framed: 125.4 x 186.7 x 9.2 cm (49 3/8 x 73 1/2 x 3 5/8 in.); Unframed: 99.5 x 160.4 cm (39 3/16 x 63 1/8 in.)

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund 1961.39

Location

206 American Landscape

Did you know?

Novelist Henry James grew up with this painting and described its foreground monk as his “constant friend.”

Description

Cole visited Italy in 1831 and made a small pencil sketch of this vista of Florence shortly before sunset. In his New York studio six years later, he transformed the drawing into this large oil painting, adding picturesque humans and goats to the foreground. Exhibiting View of Florence alongside a painting of the Catskill Mountains in New York in 1837, Cole set out to prove that he had mastered the very different landscapes of the Old and New Worlds.

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Inscriptions

Inscription

Signed lower right: "T C"

Provenance

1961-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

1960-1961

(Victor Spark, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)

Until 1960

Francis Moro, New York, NY, sold to Victor Spark1 ¹

Private collector, New York, NY, sold to Francis Moro1 ²

(Antique store, New York, NY, sold to a private collector)1 ³

By 1854-?

Henry James, Sr. [1811-1882], New York, NY1 ⁴

By 1848-before 1854

Edward James, New York, NY, probably to his brother, Henry James, S1 ⁵

by 1839

Jonathan Mason, Boston1 ⁶

1838-1839?

Possibly Mr. Hunt, Boston1

Provenance Footnotes

¹1Francis Moro and his brother, Tom, operated Paul Moro, Inc., a paintings conservation studio in New York City that had been founded by their father. Francis, who owned the Cole, cleaned and lined the painting with Tim, before selling it to Victor Spark in 1960. Francis also bought and sold paintings, and in 1966 he established Moro Galleries, Inc.

²1After purchasing the painting, this unknown collector brought it to Francis Moro for conservation, ultimately selling it to him.

³1The painting was displayed in the window of an unidentified antique store in New York City, where it was noticed and then purchased by an unknown collector.

⁴1Henry James, Sr. owned the painting by 1854, when he was listed as its owner in a New York Gallery of Fine Arts exhibition on May 1st of that year. In his memoir of 1913, A Small Boy and Others, his son, novelist Henry James recalls the painting, which "covered half a side of our front parlor” of the family’s brownstone on West 14th Street in Manhattan. He writes that, as of 1913, the painting was "long ago lost to our sight;" apparently, it was no longer in the possession of any member of the James family by this point. The painting’s whereabouts from 1854 to circa 1960 remain unknown. In 1855, the James family moved to Europe, returning in 1859 to reside mainly in Newport, Rhode Island, where they lived until 1865, when Henry James, Sr. sold the 14th Street house and settled the family in Cambridge. The 14th Street house was sold to William Benton Greene [1819-1904], who had rented it while the James family resided elsewhere. Alfred Habegger, a noted Henry James scholar, suggested that the painting may have remained on the walls of the James home when they moved to Europe and that Greene “inherited” the painting with the house.

⁵1Edward James lent the painting to an 1848 exhibition of works by Cole held at the American Art Union. Edward James was the uncle of novelist Henry James; he lived in Albany and is among the lesser known members of the James family. In some versions of the provenance of View of Florence, Edward James is followed by Thomas Parkman Cushing, who is then followed by Henry James, Sr. In her entry on View of Florence in the exhibition catalogue, A Lost World: Masterpieces of American Painting , 1760-1910 (1983), Diana Strazdes situated the painting in the possession of Thomas Parkman Cushing in 1850, when he lent a Cole painting titled “View on the Arno, near Florence” to an exhibition at the Boston Athenaeum. It seems that Strazdes likely confused View of Florence with View of the Arno, near Florence (Worcester Art Museum, 1991.179), assigning the Cushing provenance to View of Florence which in fact it belongs to View of the Arno.

⁶1Mason, Cole's friend and agent, is listed as the painting's owner in an 1839 exhibition at the Boston Athenaeum.

Citations

Victor Spark, letter to Henry S. Francis, June 10, 1960, in CMA curatorial file.

David Steinberg, letter to Alfred Habegger, May 16, 1994, in CMA curatorial file.

Victor D. Spark Papers, Series 4.2, Other Financial Records, 1930-1981, Box 17, Folder 6, Stock Books, 1958-1960, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Frank Zuccari, email to Marcia Steele, June 26, 2014, in CMA curatorial file.

Alfred Habegger, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, March 20, 2013, in CMA curatorial file.

David Steinberg, letter to Alfred Habegger, May 16, 1994, in CMA curatorial file

James, Henry. A Small Boy and Others. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1913.

Habegger, Alfred. The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994.

David Steinberg, letter to Alfred Habegger, May 16, 1994, in CMA curatorial file.

Alfred Habegger, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, March 20, 2013, in CMA curatorial file.

Perkins, Robert F., William J. Gavin, and Mary Margaret Shaughnessy. The Boston Athenaeum Art Exhibition Index, 1827-1874. Boston, Mass: The Library of the Boston Athenaeum, 1980.

David Steinberg, letter to Alfred Habegger, May 16, 1994, in CMA curatorial file.

William S. Talbot [?], notes on a telephone conversation with Howard S. Merritt, Oct. 1, 1982, in CMA curatorial file.

Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisition Press Release,” July 13, 1961, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. archive.org

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Reproduced: p. 184 archive.org

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 184 archive.org

The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 228 archive.org

Adams, Henry. What's American about American art?: a gallery tour in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2008. Reproduced: p. 82 - 83

Simpson, Marc. "I like ambiguities and detest great glares: Henry James and American Paintings." In Henry James and American Painting. 48-97. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press; New York, New York: The Morgan Library & Museum, 2017. Reproduced: p. 51, fig.1; Mentioned: P. 50-52

Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin. "Italy: The Grand Tour." In Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser and Tim Barringer, 179-193. New York : The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018. Reproduced: p. 191, cat. 45; Mention: p. 191 & 193

Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin. "Re-examining Thomas Cole." The Magazine Antiques 185, no. 1 (January/February 2018): 140-147. Reproduced: p. 140

Exhibition history

New York, National Academy of Design, Annual Exhibition (1837), cat. no. 39 as View of Florence.

Boston, Athenaeum, Annual Exhibition (1839), cat. no. 123, see The Boston Athenaeum: Art Exhibition Index, 1827-1874 (Boston, 1980), p. 38, listed under year 1839 as View on the Arno, Florence, owned by J. Mason.

New York, Gallery of the American Art-Union, Exhibition of the Paintings of the Late Thomas Cole, At the Gallery of the American Art-Union (27 March 1848-?), cat. no. 33, catalogue reproduced as Appendix 1in Parry (1988), pp. 368-372.

Boston, Atheneum, Annual Exhibition (1850), cat. no. 137, see The Boston Athenaeum: Art Exhibition Index, 1827-1874 (Boston, 1980), p. 38, listed under year 1850 as View on the Arno, Near Florence owned by T.P. Cushing.

New York, New York Gallery of Fine Arts, (1 May 1854) cat. no. 61, p. 10, see Index to American Art Exhibition Catalogues.

Baltimore, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Thomas Cole: Paintings by an American Romanticist (26 January-28 February 1965), cat. no. 14.

Rochester, Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Thomas Cole (14 February-23 March 1969); traveled to Utica, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute (7 April-4 May 1969); Albany, Albany Institute of History and Art (9 May-20 June 1969); New York, Whitney Museum of American Art (30 June-1 September 1969), cat. no. 32, illus. p. 83.

Lawrence, University of Kansas Museum of Art, The Arcadian Landscape: Nineteenth-Century American Painters in Italy (4 November-3 December 1972), cat. no. 12, illus.

Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting 1760-1910 (7 September-13 November 1983); traveled to Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art (7 December 1983-12 February 1984); did not go to Paris; cat. no. 29, pp. 229-230, illus. p. 229.

Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, The Lure of Italy: American Artists and The Italian Experience, 1760-1914 (16 September-13 December 1992); traveled to Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art (3 February-11 April 1993); Houston, Museum of Fine Arts (23 May-8 August 1993), cat. no. 76, illus. pp. 330-331, pp. 42-54.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (1/29/2018 - 5/13/2018) and the National Gallery, London, UK (6/13/2018 - 10/7/2018): "Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings"

Year in Review (1961). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 1-26, 1961).

Paintings and Drawings by Thomas Cole. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (organizer) (January 26-February 28, 1965).

Thomas Cole. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, NY (organizer) (co-organizer) (February 14-March 23, 1969); Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY (April 5-May 4, 1969); Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY (May 9-June 20, 1969); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (June 30-September 1, 1969).

Florence and the Arts: Five Centuries of Patronage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 13-September 19, 1971).

19th Century Americans in Italy. Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS (organizer) (November 3-December 3, 1972).

Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (January 29-May 13, 2018); National Gallery, London, London WC2N 5DN (June 13-October 7, 2018).

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{{cite web|title=View of Florence|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1961.39|author=Thomas Cole|year=1837|access-date=26 September 2023|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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