Basil Hall, View from Mount Holyoke, etching, 1829. Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections. View in Scrapbook
In comparison to a more straightforward view by Basil Hall, Cole's work endowed the prospect from Mount Holyoke with characteristic embellishments: the blasted tree trunk and dramatic thunderstorm, for example. In these transformations, we see the artist—like his umbrella—straddling the divide between empirical study and imaginative transformation of nature. 1