Joseph Foxcroft Cole

As an artist and agent for collectors, Cole had an influential role in Boston art taste in the late 1800s. His own landscapes were popular among collectors of the French Barbizon style. Cole often exhibited his work in Paris, purchasing paintings on behalf of collectors such as Henry Angell and Peter Chardon Brooks. In the later 1870s he would encourage the acquisition of Impressionist works by Monet and Pissarro to Boston collectors. Cole himself owned Monet's Antibes Seen from the Plateau Notre-Dame, which he later gave to the MFA.