The Fountain of Vaucluse is an 1841 oil on canvas painting by British-American painter Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School.

Tom Christopher wrote that “[Thomas] Cole’s greatest artistic asset proved to be his untutored eye.”[2] Cole emigrated to America with his family in the spring of 1819 at the age of eighteen.

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

Because of this, Cole was granted an additional clarity of and sensitivity to the vibrancy of American landscapes awash with color, a stark contrast to the bleak and subdued landscapes of the country he left behind.

Cole altered the landscape: narrowing the canyon in order to make the setting more inspiring.