Genevieve

Thomas Cole made this oil sketch for a painting based on English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Love.” The painting was never completed, as Cole found himself too absorbed by the landscape to attend to the details of the story. He wrote to his friend and fellow artist Asher B. Durand: “I commenced with sweet Genevieve and her Lover and have ended with a Solitary Tower and Shepherd Boy looking dead into the moon’s eye—My subject was Swamped . . . I am sorry, very sorry but it can’t be helped.” The sketch’s fresh, vivid coloring and free rendering reveal Cole’s talent for expressive landscapes.

Love

“Oft in my waking dreams do I / Live o’er again that happy hour/ When midway on the mount I lay, / Beside the ruined tower. / The moonshine stealing o’er the scene/ Had blended with the lights of eve; / And she was there, my hope, my joy, / My own dear Genevieve”