4x5 transparency scanned on Hasselblad Flextight X1 by Ed Pollard-2010.

The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds

Artist Thomas Cole (American, 1801 - 1848)

CultureAmerican

Date1833-1834

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions101 1/2 x 185 1/2 in. (257.8 x 471.2 cm)
Overall, Frame: 110 x 193 in. (279.4 x 490.2 cm)

Credit LineGift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. in memory of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

Object number80.30

Collections

American Art before 1945

On View

Chrysler Museum of Art, Gallery 211

DescriptionThis very large oil on canvas painting exhibits the Biblical story from the book of Luke. The upper left corner of the canvas is filled with the aura and light of the "heavenly host" as angels appear to the shepherds. The shepherds in the foreground hold three different postures. The first on his face, the second leans back holding out his arm and the third stands quietly facing the sight leaning on his staff. The dark sky of the background is illuminated by a single bright star hovering over an unseen nativity.

Label TextThomas Cole American (1801-1848) The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, 1833-34 Oil on canvas, 101 1/2 x 185 1/2 in. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., in memory of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch 80.30 Thomas Cole was America's first great landscape painter and the founder of the group of mid-nineteenth-century New York landscapists known as the Hudson River School. The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds is Cole's largest canvas and one of his earliest and most ambitious attempts at historical landscape painting. It was produced in New York during the winter of 1833-34, and as Cole later said, it was completed in the astonishingly brief span of "about two months; I could not afford more [time]." The dramatic New Testament story unfolds in a sweeping nocturnal landscape struck by bursts of heavenly light. Appearing in golden light, an angel announces Christ's birth to startled shepherds in the fields below; the light surrounding the angel serves as a symbol of spiritual awakening. The shepherds, for example, represent three successively higher states of spiritual response to the angel's message, beginning with the stunned fear of the praying youth and culminating in the quiet understanding of the standing elder. Some scholars have noted that the middle shepherd bears a resemblance to Cole and may be an idealized self-portrait. ProvenanceThe artist until 1837; Boston Atheneum, 1837-1977; Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1977; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.; Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., in memory of Colonel Edgar William and Mrs. Bernice Chrysler Garbisch to the Chrysler Museum, 1980. Exhibition HistoryAmerican Academy of the Fine Arts in New York, N.Y., Spring 1834. Mayor's Court Room, Albany City Hall, Albany, N.Y., 1834. Boston, Mass., Fall 1834. Albany Museum, Albany, N.Y., 1835. "12th Exhibition of Paintings in the Athenaeum Gallery," Boston Athenæum, Mass., 1838. (Exh. cat. no. 4) "Annual Exhibitions," Boston Athenæum, Boston, Mass., 1838-1844, 1848, 1850, 1852, 1857-1873. "A Gallery Collects," Hirschl & Alder, New York, N.Y., 1977. (Exh. cat. no. 15) "Reopening of the Joan P. Brock Galleries," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., Opening in March of 2008. "Thomas Cole's Voyage of Life," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, October 21, 2014 - January 18, 2015. Published ReferencesWilliam Dunlap, "Mr. Cole's Picture," _New-York American_ XIV, no. 1331 (March 21, 1834): 1. "Miscellaneous Notices of the Fine Arts, Literature, Science, the Drama, &c.," _The American Monthly Magazine_ III, no. 2 (April 1834): 139-140. Mabel Munson Swan, with an introduction by Charles Knowles Bolton, _The Athenæum Gallery, 1827-1873: The Boston Athenæum as an Early Patron of Art_ (Boston, Mass.: The Boston Athenæum, 1940), 127-128. Louis Legrand Noble, edited by Elliot S. Vesell, _The Life and Works of Thomas Cole_ (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964), 100, 136-137, 138. Henry T. Tuckerman, _Book of the Artists_ (New York: James F. Carr, 1967), 230, 627. William H. Gerdts, Jr., "Cole's Painting 'After the Temptation'," _The Baltimore Museum of Art: Studies on Thomas Cole, An American Romanticist_ Annual II (1967): 105. Ellwood C. Parry III, "Thomas Cole and the Problem of Figure Painting," _American Art Journal_ 4 (March 1972): 79-86. Catalog notes by Nancy Wall Moure, essay by Donelson F. Hoopes, _American Narrative Painting_, exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Calif., 1974, 50-51. ISBN: 0875870600 _A Gallery Collects_, exh. cat., Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, N.Y., 1977, no. 15. Thomas W. Styron, "Major Acquisition on View," _The Chrysler Museum Bulletin_ 10, no. 5 (May 1980): cover, not paged. Ellwood C. Parry III, "Recent discoveries in the art of Thomas Cole: New light on lost works," _Antiques Magazine_ 120 (November 1981): 1156-1165. _The Chrysler Museum: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Norfolk, Virginia_ (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum, 1982), 83. ISBN: 0-940744-37-6 "Study for The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds," _The Chrysler Museum Bulletin_ 14, no. 8 (August 1984): not paged. John Dillenberger, _The Visual Arts and Christianity in America: The Colonial Period through the Nineteenth Century_ (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), 100, plate 43. ISBN: 0891307613 William H. Gerdts and Mark Thistlethwaite, _Grand Illusions: History Painting in America_ (Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum, 1988), 98, 100, fig. 49. ISBN: 0883600560 Ellwood C. Parry III, _The Art of Thomas Cole: Ambition and Imagination_ (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988), 116, 119-120, 149-151, 153-154, plate 9. ISBN: 0874132142 Irma B. Jaffe, ed., _The Italian Presence in American Art, 1760-1860_ (New York & Rome: Fordham University Press; Istituto della enciclopedia Italiana, 1989), 112, 115, 125-126, plate 53. ISBN: 0823212491 Earl A. Powell, _Thomas Cole_ (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1990), 58, 64, 66. ISBN: 0810931583 Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_ (Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum, 1991), 92, pl. 69. ISBN: 0-940744-59-7, 0-940744-62-7 Gerald L. Carr, _Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonné of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site_ (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 54. William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach, ed., _Thomas Cole: Landscape into History_, exh. cat., National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1994. John Davis, _The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture_ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 56, no. 13. Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 52-53, no. 24. David Bjelajac, _Thomas Cole's Oxbow and the American Zion Divided_, Volume 20, Number 1. University of Chicago Press in association with the Smithsonian American art Museum. 2006, 78 & 79, no. 19. Stanley Ellis Cushing and David B. Dearinger, _ Acquired Tastes: 200 Years of Collecting for the Boston Athenaeum_ (Boston, MA: The Boston Athenaeum, 2007), 45-47, fig.15. Jeff Harrison, _Collecting with Vision: Treasures From the Chrysler Museum of Art_ (London: D. Giles Ltd., 2007), 60, fig. 59. Robin Kelsey, _Archive Style: Photographs & Illustrations for U.S. Surveys, 1850-1890_ (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, Ltd., 2007), 67. Ross Barrett, "Violent Prophecies: Thomas Cole, Republican Aesthetics, and the Political Jeremiad," _American Art_ 27 (2013): 24-49 Mark Dreisonstok_"Art by Masons at the Chrysler Museum"_The Scottish Rite Journal_November/December 2024, 9.