Biografie von Joseph Foxcroft COLE (1837-1892)

Birth place: Jay, ME

Death place: Winchester, MA

Addresses: Mystic Lake, Winchester, MA

Profession: Landscape painter, lithographer

Studied: apprenticed to lithographer, J.H. Bufford of Boston, 1855 -57 (along with Winslow Homer in 1855); Emile Lambinet and …cole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1860-62; Charles Jacque, Paris, 1865

Exhibited: NAD, 1863-92; Paris Salon, 1868, 1875-1877; Boston Athenaeum; Boston AC, 1873-1891; Philadelphia Centennial Expo, 1876; PAFA, 1892; Royal Acad., London

Work: NMAA; BMFA; Winchester Library; Honeyman Collection; Walker Art Mus. at Bowdoin College (ME); Detroit Inst. of Arts; Bancroft Library, Univ. of California, Berkeley

Comments: After working for Bufford, Cole ran his own lithography shop in Boston from 1857-60 (and also drew on stone for several firms) before going to Paris to study painting. Between 1860 and 1877 he divided his time between Paris and Boston. In 1877 he settled at Winchester, MA, but in the 1880s made trips to southern California and later returnd to Europe for several years. Influenced by William Morris Hunt and the French Barbizon masters, he specialized in pastoral scenes painted in a Barbizon style. While in California he painted the Sierra Nevada mountains and the missions, and during his later years in Winchester he chose scenes near his home and around Providence, RI. His daughter, Adelaide Cole Chase (see entry), became a well-known portrait painter in Boston.

Sources: G&W; DAB; Boston BD 1858-60; Maine Artists"; Graves, Dictionary; Stokes, Hist. Prints; Swan, BA; Cowdrey, NAD. More recently, see Pierce and Slautterback, 168; Hughes, Artists in California; and 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1: 284; P & H Samuels, 100; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 331; Falk, PAFA, Vol. 2