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Hey! This is Off The Wall, and I'm Michelle Maryk. We are at the gorgeous Brooklyn Museum.
Brooklyn in the house, people. Let's go. Hey! We are here with Terry Carbone, the curator
of American art at the fantastic Brooklyn Museum. Thanks so much for having us.
My pleasure. And right now we're in a very cool room that's
called "Everyday Life." And it features, well, everyday life American paintings.
Right now we're standing in front of a particularly large and beautiful one. Why don't you tell
us a little bit about this one and why it's one of your favorites?
Sure. This is one of the most important pictures in the gallery. It's by Thomas Cole, and it's
called "The Picnic." Cole was one of the most important nineteenth century American painters.
He was the father of what came to be known as The Hudson River School of Landscape Painting.
What makes this different is that by the 1840s he was trying to combine landscape and figure
painting. So it was particularly groundbreaking.
Absolutely. Other painters had done narrative subjects of various types but never had really
nested them in a beautiful big landscape. Cole wanted to symbolize the sustenance that
nature offered to people, and that's part of why he chose a picnic theme. .
It's really sort of Utopian. I mean it's this ideal image. Now does this place actually
exist? No, this landscape is based on real landscapes
or parts of them that Cole studied and portrayed in other paintings. But here he takes the
most beautiful parts of each of them to make an absolutely ideal scene.
It's really fantastic. What is it about it that moves you the most?
I think the light, the way it fills the landscape and really casts this beautiful warm glow.
It's the end of the day. Clearly, they've been enjoying themselves for hours. Music
is being played by the guitarist who stands near the tree, and it really is the ideal
moment. It certainly is. Now I'm thinking we could
go down to the cafeteria, get a few sandwiches, and try and find this place.
Sounds great.