View source for The Fountain of Vaucluse

{{short description|Painting by Thomas Cole}}
{{Infobox artwork
| image=File:The Fountain of Vaucluse by Thomas Cole.jpg
|caption=The Fountain of Vaucluse, 1841
| title=The Fountain of Vaucluse
| artist=[[Thomas Cole]]
| year=1841
| material=Oil on Canvas
| height_imperial = 69
| width_imperial  = 49.125
| height_metric   = 175.26
| width_metric    = 124.78
| imperial_unit   = in
| metric_unit     = cm
| city=Dallas, Texas
| museum=[[Dallas Museum of Art]]
}}
'''''The Fountain of Vaucluse''''' is an 1841 oil on canvas painting by British-American painter [[Thomas Cole]], founder of the [[Hudson River School]]. The work depicts the former home of [[Petrarch]]<ref name="dallas">{{cite web |url=https://www.dma.org/collection/artwork/thomas-cole/fountain-vaucluse|title=The Fountain of Vaucluse|website=Dallas Museum of Art|access-date=August 19, 2020}}</ref> in [[Fontaine-de-Vaucluse]], [[France]].
==Artist's background==
{{Main|Thomas Cole}}
Tom Christopher wrote that “[Thomas] Cole’s greatest artistic asset proved to be his untutored eye.”<ref>Christopher, “Living Off the Landscape,” 1.</ref>  Cole emigrated to [[America]] with his family in the spring of 1819 at the age of eighteen.<ref>Noble, ''The Life and Works of Thomas Cole'', 6.</ref>  As a child, his surroundings were of [[Lancashire]], [[England]], an area known to be an epicenter of [[United Kingdom|Britain]]’s primarily industrial region.  Because of this, Cole was granted an additional clarity of and sensitivity to the vibrancy of American landscapes awash with color, a stark contrast to the bleak and subdued landscapes of the country he left behind.<ref>Great Northern Catskills of Greene County. “Hudson River School of Art,” 1.</ref> From 1831 to 1832, Cole traversed Italy, where he encountered ruins.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://collection.crystalbridges.org/people/172/thomas-cole|title=Thomas Cole|website=Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art|access-date=August 21, 2020}}</ref>
==History==
The work was painted during Cole's second trip to Europe. Cole altered the landscape: narrowing the canyon in order to make the setting more inspiring.<ref name="dallas"/>
==References==
===Citations===
{{Reflist}}
===Works cited===
* Christopher, Tom. "Living Off the Landscape: How Thomas Cole and Frederick Church made Themselves at Home in the Hudson River Valley." ''Humanities'' 30, no. 4 (2009):6-11.
* Noble, Luis Legrand. ''The Life and Works of Thomas Cole''. Edited by [[Elliot Vesell|Elliot S. Vesell]] Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964.
* Great Northern Catskills of Greene County. “Hudson River School of Art”. http://www.greatnortherncatskills.com/arts-culture/hudson-river-school-art.
==External links==
* [http://www.explorethomascole.org/ Explore Thomas Cole] provided by the [[National Park Service]]
{{Thomas Cole}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fountain of Vaucluse, The}}
[[Category:1841 paintings]]
[[Category:Paintings by Thomas Cole]]
[[Category:Hudson River School paintings]]
[[Category:Petrarch]]
[[Category:Oil on canvas paintings]]