Charles Octavius Cole
Charles Octavius Cole | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 1, 1814 |
| Died | February 14, 1858 (aged 43) Portland, Maine, U.S. |
| Resting place | Western Cemetery |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Painting |
| Style | Portraiture |
Charles Octavius Cole (July 1, 1814 – February 14, 1858) was an American painter. Born in Massachusetts, he spent spent much of his life in Maine, where he was regarded as Portland's most eminent painter during his time in the city.[1][2] Although he was known as a portrait painter, he did produce some landscape paintings. Cole's portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is on display in Portland's Wadsworth-Longfellow House, while his Imperial Knob and Gorge: White Mountains of New Hampshire[3] oil-on-canvas landscape is in the possession of Brooklyn Museum in New York City.
Early life
[edit]Cole was born in 1814 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His father, Bordeaux native Moses Dupré Cole (1783–1849),[4] was a sign painter and portraitist in that town.[5][6]
Career
[edit]
Between 1838 and 1842, Cole worked in New Orleans, where he was coined a "Plantation Baroque painter",[7] before moving to Portland, Maine, where he remained until around 1856.[8]
His portrait of Portland minister Revd. Asa Cummings is in the possession of Portland Public Library and is in the art inventories catalog at Smithsonian American Art Museums in Washington, D.C.,[9] while his unfinished portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is on display in the Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland.[10] Cole also gifted Longfellow "a painting of great merit" of waxworker Patience Wright.[11]
Personal life
[edit]Cole married Mary B. Smith, with whom he had three children.[8] Daughter Annie Darling married Dr. Henry Carmichael, an analytical and consulting chemist from New York City.[12]
Death
[edit]Cole died of tuberculosis in 1858, aged 43.[8] He was interred in Portland's Western Cemetery.
References
[edit]- ^ "James Clark Burnham, Portland, 1848". Maine Memory Network. Retrieved 2025-03-30.
- ^ Carbone, Teresa A.; Museum, Brooklyn; Gallati, Barbara Dayer; Ferber, Linda S. (2006). American Paintings in the Brooklyn Museum: Artists Born by 1876. Brooklyn Museum. p. 381. ISBN 978-1-904832-08-9.
- ^ McGrath, Robert L. (2001-03-01). Gods in Granite: The Art of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Syracuse University Press. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-8156-0663-5.
- ^ "Cole, Moses Dupre, 1783-1849 - born Jacques Moyse Dupre. | Portsmouth Athenaeum". athenaeum.pastperfectonline.com. Retrieved 2025-03-30.
- ^ Arts, Detroit Institute of; Black, Mary; Society, Founders (1991). American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts: Works by artists born before 1816. Hudson Hills Press. p. 272. ISBN 978-1-55595-044-6.
- ^ Belknap, Henry Wyckoff (1927). Artists and Craftsmen of Essex County, Massachusetts. Essex Institute. p. 7.
- ^ Orgera, Ryan; Harlan, Raynie; Parent, Wayne (2014-10-13). The Louisiana Field Guide: Understanding Life in the Pelican State. LSU Press. p. 215. ISBN 978-0-8071-5777-0.
- ^ a b c "Charles Octavius Cole (1814-1858) | White Mountain Art & Artists". Retrieved 2025-03-30.
- ^ Institution, Smithsonian. "Portrait of Asa Cummings (1795-1856), (painting)". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2025-03-29.
- ^ "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ca. 1843". Maine Memory Network. Retrieved 2025-03-30.
- ^ Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1814-1843. Harvard University Press. p. 385. ISBN 978-0-674-52725-6.
- ^ Corey, Deloraine Pendre (1899). Malden Past and Present: Issued on the Occasion of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of Malden, Mass., May, 1899 : Incorporated as a Town in 1649. Malden Mirror. p. 74.
- 1814 births
- 1858 deaths
- 19th-century American male artists
- 19th-century American painters
- American portrait painters
- American landscape painters
- Artists from Massachusetts
- Painters from Massachusetts
- People from Newburyport, Massachusetts
- Artists from Portland, Maine
- Burials at Western Cemetery (Portland, Maine)