托马斯·科尔油画风景《白山隆口景致》高清图片

作品简介

在这幅横向构图的风景画中，我们的视线越过一片开阔的低地，投向嶙峋山丘后方拔地而起的巍峨山峰——山丘上遍布松林与如火如荼的红橙秋树。低地的青绿草甸间散落着枯树与树桩。穿过山丘间近乎画面正中的狭窄隘口，一座巨峰矗立在淡蓝天幕下，几乎触及画布上缘。参差的山体表面斑驳着肉桂色、铁锈红与焦糖棕的暖色调。整个场景沐浴在右侧而来的暖光中，但锡灰色的暴风云正从左上角涌来，逐渐包围峰顶。

最近景处，一排断裂的树干横贯画面，其间夹杂着猩红、金橙的植被与青绿芦苇。左侧稍远处可见一泓银光粼粼的池塘。在宏大的景观尺度中，一个骑马者正从右下角的土路疾驰而来，朝向左侧山脚下一座白色小屋。骑者身着及膝的靛蓝束腰外衣与红色绑腿。细看之下，还能发现两个孩童与白狗正迎向骑者。右侧山边矗立着稻草黄的建筑。极远处，一辆马车正驶离屋舍，道路蜿蜒通向峡谷隘口。

艺术家在画面左下角的枯树干上直接题写签名，宛若天然铭文："T. Cole 1839"。

We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”

新罕布什尔州白山山脉的克劳福德峡谷曾因1826年一场致命雪崩夺走九条生命而闻名。科尔这幅画作描绘的正是此前一次山体滑坡的现场——这场灾难促使塞缪尔·威利夫妇带着五个孩子和两名雇工仓皇逃离峡谷住所，在附近搭建他们以为安全的避难所，却不幸正巧位于次夜雪崩的路径上。救援队次日赶到时疯狂搜寻，最终只找到威利夫妇、两个孩子和雇工的遗体，其余三个孩子至今下落不明。

克劳福德峡谷被视为人类在不可预测的自然伟力面前脆弱性的象征——这一主题始终贯穿科尔的风景创作。在这看似田园诗般的秋景中，微小的人物对潜在危机浑然不觉：黑衣骑手沿蜿蜒小径奔驰，两人一犬驻足著名的峡谷旅馆门外，远处驿马车正要穿过隆口。但自然毁灭性的力量无处不在：前景扭曲的树木、中景枯枝如骨的死树、仿佛被超自然力量劈开的V形峡谷，以及左上方席卷而来的乌云。

对痴迷于风景多重寓意的科尔而言，克劳福德峡谷是个蕴含无限可能的主题：一个家庭的悲惨遭遇、自然伟力的不可抗拒、时光的无情流逝。画家成功将这些线索编织成层次丰富的整体。画面既充满生机活力与视觉美感，又深刻传递着动荡、变迁与无常的哲思。

Crawford Notch, a deep valley in New Hampshire's White Mountains, gained notoriety in 1826 when nine lives were lost in a catastrophic avalanche nearby. Cole's painting depicts the site of an earlier landslide whose destruction prompted the victims—Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Willey and their five children, along with two farmhands—to immediately leave their home in Crawford Notch and construct what they thought would be a safe haven close by. Instead, they ran into the very path of disaster—the next night's avalanche struck their temporary refuge. A rescue party arriving the next day searched feverishly for the family. The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Willey, two children, and the farmhands were eventually located, but no trace of the other three children was ever found.

Crawford Notchis thought to allude to this dramatic and tragic episode as emblematic of man's frailty in the face of the vast and unpredictable forces of nature—a theme Cole often explored in his landscapes. Amid this seemingly idyllic autumnal setting, the painting's diminutive human figures appear oblivious to the possibility of tragedy. A man on a black horse rides along a path zig-zagging through the picture space; two figures and a dog stand outside the well-known Notch House Inn, and in the distance a stagecoach is about to pass through the notch. Yet evidence of nature's destructive potential is everywhere apparent: the twisted trees of the foreground, the skeletal, gesturing dead trees of the middle distance, the V-shape form of the notch (seemingly riven by some supernatural process), and the dark, sweeping storm clouds at the upper left.

For Cole, ever fascinated by the multiplicity of meanings embedded in landscape, Crawford Notch was a subject rich with possibilities:a family's harrowing misfortune, the power of natural forces, the passing of time. InCrawford Notchthe artist successfully integrated these various threads of content into a richly textured whole. At once vibrant, vital, and beautiful, the painting is also provocatively expressive of instability, change, and uncertainty.