“One of the great historical ironies of Mount Desert Island was that its natural beauty was being destroyed just as it was being ‘discovered’. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the idea that ‘wilderness’ could be appealing was bizarre to most people. But Thomas Cole, the landscape artist, and other painters of the Hudson River school, helped change that notion. Cole visited the island first in 1844. Other painters followed. They glorified the island’s rugged beauty and its people’s simple life, portraying in their brushstrokes both the raw landscapes and the lives of farmers and fishermen who lived by the sea.” (Sterba, 13)

Upon reading this passage, I paused my reading in order to understand what was being discussed. I was intrigued at the mention of Thomas Cole after our previous discussions of his work, so I searched for a painting of Mount Desert Island by him. The image below truly does capture the rugged beauty of the island.

The website where I found the image also included the following quote from Cole’s journal: “A tremendous overhanging precipice, rising from the ocean, with the surf dashing against it in a frightful manner. The whole coast along here is iron bound, threatening crags, and dark caverns in which the sea thunders.” 

http://www.albanyinstitute.org/details/items/frenchmans-bay-mount-desert-island-maine.html