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Wednesday, 24 April 2013 18:29

Organization Forms to Fight Sale of Thomas Cole Painting

Thomas Cole's 'Portage Falls on the Genesee," 1839. Thomas Cole's 'Portage Falls on the Genesee," 1839. Wikimedia Commons

In February, the Fred L. Emerson Foundation and the Seward House Museum in Auburn, New York announced that they would sell a significant painting by the English-born American artist and founder of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole (1801-1848). The sale of the work, titled Portage Falls on the Genesee (1839) is intended to benefit the institution, which opened to the public in 1955 and became a registered National Historic Landmark in 1964.

Portage Falls was given to the American politician William H. Seward while he was the governor of New York prior to the Civil War. Seward went on to serve as Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson and after his death his home and its contents were donated to the Fred L. Emerson Foundation. The Foundation opened the Seward Museum but it became a fully independent, not-for-profit institution in 2009; the Cole painting was retained by the foundation.

The work, which depicts what is now Letchworth State Park in western New York, has been on view at the Seward Museum for 170 years and not everyone is pleased with the Foundation’s decision to sell it. A group known as the Seward Legacy Preservation has formed and will hold their first meeting at the Auburn Public Theater in Auburn, New York on Monday, April 29, 2013. Members of the organization, which include descendants of Seward, will fight to restore the painting to its former place in the Seward House. The painting is currently being kept in a secure storage location.

Portage Falls is said to be worth millions of dollars, which the Foundation and the Seward Museum plan on splitting when the painting sells.

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