Sarah Cole

Sarah Cole (1805-1857) was an American landscape painter and the sister of prominent American landscape painter Thomas Cole. Many of Cole’s paintings are similar in subject and visuals to her brother’s. Very little is known of her life, and few of her works have survived or can be located today. The surviving works have been displayed in collections and museums over the years.
Though Cole spent most of her life in America, she was born in Lancashire, England. Her family moved to America in 1818 and settled in Steubenville a year later. Her parents, James and Mary Cole, had six other children aside from her and Thomas, all daughters. Out of all the sisters, Sarah was the youngest. Sarah and Thomas were very close and they may have worked together at some point at their father’s business, making wallpaper. Throughout their lifetimes they spent a great deal of time together and supported each other in their artistic pursuits. Sarah would often sing or read to Thomas while he painted.
In 1824, the family moved to Pittsburgh. The next year, they moved to New York City, where Sarah likely lived for the rest of her life, despite often visiting her brother in Catskill.
It is not known when Sarah Cole began painting. She exhibited her paintings publicly only after the death of Thomas in February 1848. The National Academy of Design in New York City displayed her work from 1848 to 1852, and her works also appeared in the American Art-Union and the Maryland Historical Society during her lifetime. Two of Sarah Cole’s paintings that can be found today are on display in the Albany Institute of History and Art in Albany, New York. The paintings are A View of the Catskill Mountain House, a scene of the titular white house on a hill covered with fall foliage and a small seated figure on the ground looking up at it, and Mount Aetna, a view of the mountain in the background with a landscape and people praying to a shrine of an icon..
A note on the back of the canvas of the Catskill Mountain House painting indicates that it was copied from a painting by Thomas Cole. A View of the Catskill Mountain House is nearly identical to her brother’s painting of the same subject. Mount Aetna is not a direct copy but it is likewise similar to her brother’s style.
Another painting by Sarah Cole, Ancient Column Near Syracuse (1848), depicts a landscape with a Neoclassical theme. It pictures a person with some animals on a green field in front of ancient ruins. The Thomas Cole National Historic Site in the Catskills also houses her paintings Duffield Church, English Landscape, and Landscape with Church.
In addition to being a painter, she made etchings. None of those works of art survive today but in 1888, decades after her death, New York’s Union League Club held an exhibition called “Women Etchers of America” that included some of her work. All of the other exhibitors in that show were living artists.
Cole had a daughter, Emily, who was also a painter.
Sarah Cole died in 1857, spending her final days in Catskill, New York.