The Dead Abel is an 1832 oil-on-paper painting by British-American painter Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School.

[4] As a child, his surroundings were of Lancashire, England, an area known to be an epicenter of Britain’s primarily industrial region.

[5] As he aged and recognized his own mortality, Cole transitioned away from natural landscape paintings to focus on works conveying religious and spiritual themes.

[6] Cole painted The Dead Abel at the Accademia di San Luca in Florence, Italy.

Cole intended the work to be a study for a larger painting which would have depicted Adam and Eve discovering Abel's body.