The greatest name, however, in the early history of landscape art in the United States is that of THOMAS COLE (1801--1848), who came over from England with his parents in 1819, but received his first training, such as it was, in America. Cole spent several years in Italy, and remained for the rest of his life under the spell of Claude, Salvator Rosa, and Poussin. He aspired to be a painter of large historic, or rather allegoric landscapes, and some of his productions in this line, as, for instance, _The Course of Empire_ (New York Historical Society), a series of five canvases, showing the career of a nation from savage life through the splendours of power to the desolation of decay, will always secure for him a respectable place among the followers of the old school. He therefore shared, with most of his American colleagues, the fatal defect that his work contained no germ of advancement, but was content to be measured by standards which were beginning to be false, because men had outlived the time in which they were set up. Cole did not, however, confine himself to such allegoric landscapes. He was a great lover of the Catskills, and often chose his subjects there, or in the White Mountains. But in the specimens of this kind to be seen at the New York Historical Society's rooms, he shows himself curiously defective in colour, and mars the tone by undue contrasts between light and dark. He is at his best in the representation of storm effects, such as _The Tornado_, in the Corcoran Gallery at Washington. Among the ablest representatives of the "Hudson River School" were J. F. KENSETT (1818--1873), and SANFORD R. GIFFORD (1823--1880). For Kensett, it may indeed be claimed that he was the best technician of his time, bolder in treatment than most of his colleagues, and with a true feeling for the poetry of colour. Gifford, who divided his allegiance about equally between America, Italy, and the Orient, loved to paint phenomenal effects of light, which often suggest the studio rather than nature. One of the principal works of this very successful and greatly esteemed artist, _The Ruins of the Parthenon_, is the property of the Corcoran Gallery, which also owns several pictures by Kensett. [Illustration: NOON BY THE SEA-SHORE: BEVERLY BEACH. _By_ J. F. KENSETT. _Copyright, 1879, by Harper and Brothers._] As one of the leading lights of the little cluster of American pre-Raphaelites, we may note JOHN W. HILL (died 1879), who painted landscapes chiefly in water-colour.