PHILADELPHIA - America loves its origin stories: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa MarÃa; Pilgrim Rock; the Boston Tea Party. The history of American art also has its origin stories, and one of them is the tale in which a young British-born painter named Thomas Cole moves from Philadelphia to New York and, for the first time, takes a sketching trip up the Hudson River, thus founding what we now know as the Hudson River School of American landscape painting.
