This scene looks west from the New York village of Catskill toward the Catskill Mountains, a view that Cole first sketched in the summer of 1825. The composition is nearly stage-like, with its central body of water, distant mountains, and luminous atmosphere. The trees in the foreground represent natural cycles of life and death, demonstrating Cole's aesthetic philosophy, which endowed landscapes with symbolic significance. It also shows a harmonious balance between nature and settlement. In 1825 Cole made his first trip up the Hudson River to the Catskill Mountains, finding a subject with which he secured his reputation as a great painter of the American landscape. Cole's journey coincided with the growth of tourism and trade in the region, and he blazed a trail for other Hudson River School painters who portrayed this landscape as an American Eden.