Portfolio. The Oxbow by Thomas Cole. The Hay Wain by John Constable

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The Oxbow.
Brief Description of The Oxbow.
The Oxbow is an astonishing painting by an American painter called Thomas Cole. The artwork was created in 1836. The art is titled "View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, After a Thunderstorm (1836)," but is commonly referred to as "The Oxbow." The painting The medium of the picture is oil on canvas, and it measures 30.8 cm times 193 cm, currently hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Scott, 2019). The artwork features a stark contrast between the profound wilderness on the left and the development of civilization on the right. Looking closely into the painting, one will observe that Cole painted a small self-portrait at the bottom, to divulge the naturalistic style into showing his appreciation of nature and the landscape. In the distance, one can see that there are logging scars in the scene as it grows from the wilderness into civilization. The inscription of the wounds appears to be Hebrew indications reading "Noah" in landscape and "Shaddai" when reading upside down.
Visual Analysis of The Oxbow.
Cole has explained the contrast between the untamed wilderness and civilization using a successful use of composition, lighting, and color. The structure of The Oxbow begins with the view of the Connecticut River, which is distant from the top of the mountain, which had currently been swept by a storm moving west into the west. The creation essentially divides the painting where the right side is bright, light, and calm while the left side is dark and ominous (III, 2013). The division is initiated by the diagonal line created by the river and the forest. Lighting and the choice of colors have been used to signify the differences between the untamed outdoors and civilization. On the right side, there are faint colors that manifest the pastoral image and the calmness of the environment, whereas, on the right side, there are dark hovers and bold hues that can be described as wild and unwelcoming.
The lighting features of the painting transition from light to dark. There is lightning in the lower-left area of the sky, with outstanding use of a brush to show the torrential downpour. Moreover, in the untamed wilderness, the dense trees, leaves, and plants are depicted with a green color without any form of definite highlights as most of the light is concentrated around the middle of the painting (Scott, 2019). Also, the shapes on the left are more organic compared to the geometric configurations on the right. This contrasts with the nature and meaning of the right side of the painting. On the right hand, everything seems to be peaceful, calm, and organized. Soft colors have represented the environment, and while the left does not constitute any use of strong lights, the right side does not have strong darks. The sky in the setting is painted to show a faint orange of the horizon.
Why The Oxbow is significant.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, landscape painting was one of the hardest, and artists aspired to create their work based on the genre. However, Cole incorporates his picture with historical featur...