Scene from The Last of the Mohicans Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tanemund

American artist Thomas Cole painted this dramatic scene from James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel "The Last of the Mohicans," showing the heroine Cora kneeling before the aged chief Tamenund. The figures gather on a rocky outcrop surrounded by wild American landscape, the confrontation between civilizations played out against towering cliffs and distant mountains.

Cole admired Cooper's romantic vision of America's vanishing frontier and painted several literary subjects alongside his landscapes. The Hudson River School painters shared Cooper's nostalgia for wilderness untouched by civilization. This painting hangs at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.