Thomas Cole was born on February 1, 1801 in Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, England. He was the shy and sensitive son of an English immigrant who settled in Steubenville, Ohio, where he arrived in 1818. He had set up shop as a wallpaper maker, and Thomas helped his father with designs and was shown how to paint likenesses by an itinerant portrait painter who traveled from town to town in early America. He set out to be a traveling portrait painter himself. Yet as he rested by the roadside he found himself powerfully drawn to the wilderness surrounding him, he decided to become a landscape painter and left for New York City where prosperous merchants were eager to purchase paintings for their new mansions. During the summer he embar...