Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life, 1842, National Gallery of Art

Thomas Cole(1801–1848) inspired the generation of American landscape painters that came to be known as the Hudson River School. Born in Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire, England, in 1801, at the age of seventeen he emigrated with his family to the United States, first working as a wood engraver in Philadelphia before going to Steubenville, Ohio, where his father had established a wallpaper manufacturing business.