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…
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Tornado in an American Forest

Thomas Cole (American, 1801 - 1848)

1831

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 117.79 × 164.15 cm (46 3/8 × 64 5/8 in.) ; framed: 151.13 × 198.12 × 13.34 cm (59 1/2 × 78 × 5 1/4 in.)
Culture
American
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CAB
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund, 1877)
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art

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