The Connecticut River Oxbow (now a lake), immortalized by the famous landscape painter Thomas Cole just before natural flooding and erosion separated it from the Connecticut River, is visible from the ruins.
It is located in a narrow strip of land between Mount Tom (the mountain) to the south, the Connecticut River to the east, and The Oxbow, an old channel of the Connecticut River, to the north.
With his death in 1874, the painting was acquired from his estate by Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, wife of Russell Sage.
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Fancy pictures seldom sell & they generally take more time than views so I have determined to paint one of the latter.
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I have already commenced a view from Mt. Holyoke—it is about the finest scene I have in my sketchbook & is well known—it will be novel and I think effective—I could not find a subject very similar to your second picture & time would not allow me to invent one.
oxbow lake | The Oxbow | Tian-e-Zhou Oxbow Nature Reserve | Oxbow, Saskatchewan |
The river cut off the oxbow during an 1877 flood, leaving behind Carter Lake on a portion of its former course; the Supreme Court ruled in 1893 that though the land cut off by the river's changed route now lay west of the Missouri, it remained part of Iowa.
He died in 1938 in North Haverhill, New Hampshire, and is buried at the Oxbow Cemetery in Newbury, Vermont.