Tornado in an American Forest

Thomas Cole

National Gallery of Art

Two thick, twisting, splintered tree trunks with broken branches stripped of leaves are set against a dark, wooded landscape beneath a nearly black sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is dominated by coffee brown and tan, dark pewter and smoke gray, and olive green. The two trunks, set to our left of center, are the most brightly lit objects in the landscape, presumably lit from the break in the clouds in the upper right corner. More trees create a screen across the painting beyond the tree trunks. Though nearly swallowed in shadow, a couple of taller trees in the distance show that they bend nearly horizontally in a strong wind. The left half of the sky above is almost black, and it lightens a bit toward the break in the clouds to our right. Only closer inspection reveals a person standing near the base of the trunk to our right, possibly bracing against its trunk. Their dark hair blows back from their face and their navy blue jacket is lifted in the wind. The artist signed and dated the work as if he wrote it on a rock at the lower center of the painting: “T Cole 183,” the last digit missing.