The art piece that I have chosen to discuss in this essay is none other than Thomas Cole’s oil on canvas painting, Desolation. This painting is part of Thomas Cole’s famous collection, The Course of Empire. This collection includes five paintings, which represents Cole’s interpretation of Empire. Desolation is the last painting of his collection, in which it shows the results of an Empire, years later. In this painting, we view the remains of the city in the livid light of a dying day. The landscape has begun to return to wilderness, and no human beings are to be seen, but the remains of their architecture emerge from beneath a mantle of trees, ivy, and other overgrowth. The broken stumps of the pharisees loom in the background. The arches of the shattered bridge, and the columns of the temple are still visible. A single column looms in the foreground, which is now a nesting place for birds. The sunrise of the first painting is mirrored here by a moonrise, a pale light reflecting in the ruin of a river while the standing pillar reflects the last rays of sunset. This gloomy picture suggests all empires could be after their fall. It is a harsh possible future in which humanity has been destroyed by its own hands.
With The Course of Empire, Thomas Cole achieved what he described as a “higher style of landscape”. Paintings which included historical associations and moralistic narrative. He also believed to incorporate what the artist felt were “universal truths” about mankind and his relationship with the natural world. Cole enthusiastically wrote a letter to his patron, Luman Reed, of his idea for his first large-scale series. Once approved, Cole worked on The Course of Empire over the next three years. The five paintings were specifically designed for a prominent spot in Reed’s third floor picture gallery in his New York City mansion at No. 13 Greenwich Street. These paintings chart the course of human civilization, while at the same time progressing through different times of day and various weather conditions, reflecting man’s changing relationship to his environment. It is notable in part for reflecting the popular American sentiments of the times, when many saw pastoralism as the ideal phase of human civilization, fearing that empire would lead to corruption and inevitable decay.
All the paintings are 39.5 inches by 63.5 inches with the exception of, The Consummation of Empire which is 51 inches by 76 inches. The reason for this being that Cole wanted to emphasize a growing Empire at its highest point. This collection of paintings begin with The Savage State, this painting is to describe mankind at its primitive stage. Thomas Cole portrays this by showing a valley in the dim light of a dawning stormy day. We first see man dressed as a hunter, clothed in skins, as he hastens through the wilderness pursuing a deer. The features in this painting closely resemble to the visual references of those of Native American life. In his second painting, The Arcadian or Pastoral State, the sky has cleared and it appears to be a fresh Spring morning. Much of the wilderness has given way to settled lands, with plowed fields now visible. There are various activities going on in the background of this painting, which include plowing, boat-building, herding sheep, and dancing. A temple has been built on the near side of the river, and smoke arises from it. This suggests that a religion is beginning to be formed, which in throughout history, religion has always been a part in the initial stages of an Empire. In the third painting, The Consummation of Empire, there is a shift in viewpoint to the opposite shore. It is the noontime of a warm summer day. Both sides of the river valley are now covered in marble structures. The temple seems to have been transformed into a huge structure that looms over the river bank. The river is guarded by two pharoses and there are ships that go out to the sea beyond. There is a joyous crowd that crowd the painting, as a scarlet-robed king crosses the bridge connecting the two sides of the river in triumph. This painting seems to depict a thriving Empire at its peak. In the fourth painting, The Destruction of Empire, the viewpoint is almost exactly the same as the one in Consummation. Cole has taken a step back to allow a wider scene to display the action that is occurring a the center of the river. The action being, the destruction of the once thriving city. A fleet of enemy warriors has overthrown the city’s defenses, sailed up the river, and is frantically burning the city, killing and raping its inhabitants. The bridge in which the king had crossed in triumph and the beautiful columns are now broken. The statue of some hero now stands headless, still striding forward into the uncertain future. In the final painting of the series, Desolation, Cole shows interest in the theme of human and natural history, a recurring theme throughout The Course of Empire. Now that civilization has fallen, the mountain has returned to its natural state and has reestablished as a key feature in the scene. The moon in this painting does indeed confirm the time of day being evening, which completes the cycle which began with dawn in The Savage State. Nature slowly begins to reclaim the ruins of the Empire. Although this is also taken as a sign of civilization’s end, there is a sense of beauty in the remains of the architectural fragments. The deer that were once seen being hunted in The Savage State, then a frozen state in Consummation, are now seen roaming freely. The remnants of the temple signify how nature’s cycle is more powerful than anything that is constructed by human hands, no matter how refined or exquisite they may be.
These ruins recall the sketches that Cole had done on his first trip to Europe in 1829. The drawing from Cole’s sketchbook includes a column that is also prominent in Desolation, however in the painting it is covered with vines which adds to the symbolism of nature in its process of reclaiming civilization. In Cole’s final painting, any depiction of human remains has been eliminated in favor of the animals which are now able to roam through the ruins in peace. It seems that Cole wanted to mute the human tragedy in Desolation in order to emphasize the haunting beauty of nature’s return. This cycle is, unsurprisingly, depressing. It reflects Cole’s pessimism and is often seen as a commentary on Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. This is shown prominently in Consummation, for in this painting Andrew Jackson is portrayed as the military hero at the center. The Democrats, however, had a different theory of the course of empire. They saw not a spiral or cycle but a continuing upward trajectory. Levi Woodbury, a Democrat and a justice on the United States Supreme Court, for instance, responded to Cole by saying that “there would be no destruction in the United States”.
Looking closely at, Desolation, we can see that the desolation of Cole’s subject civilization in now complete, and the historical cycle turns into its final phase. Cole portrays this through many uses of formal elements. For instance, the way the mountain summit has retired to the edge and how nature has begun her long, slow re-conquest of the land and sea. The sky above the ruins is still, and the clouds thin, with nonthreatening wisps. The innumerable hosts of flora steadily tear down man’s surviving monuments to his power. The lone, pale moon and its undisturbed reflection on the riverbank surface, control the center of the frame. There is barely a single stirring of life, not a single sign of mankind enjoying either liberty or power. For all its incredible strength and wealth during the Consummation, the subject society’s power, could not protect it from the cycle, which unfortunately ends with the collapse of the Empire.
Thomas Cole’s influence as an American artist exploded during the mid-1830s and his career flourished in the early 1840s. He deeply influenced his peers and successive generations of American artists. He transformed the landscape genre from a reflective art to a medium of expressing historical, social, and political theory. In a speech to the American Art Union, Joel Headley once implored his audience: “Give me the control of the art of a country, and you may have the management of its administration…The tariff, internal improvements, banks, political speeches and party measures…all together do not so educate the soul of the nation.” By producing titanic icons of classical liberal, romantic, locofoco historical and social theory, Thomas Cole stands as one of the most influential fine artists in the history of liberal thought.
To Cole, this very process, the dialectical relationship between the liberty interest and the power interest, was in fact history and history was inescapable. However it was not only inescapable, but instead the historical process was proved to be necessary and even beneficial to mankind. The tone of Desolation, while it being somber and lonesome, is undoubtedly peaceful. Man, after all, still exists apart from the life of any particular civilization, and so long as nature continues to provide the elements of life. History may once again begin anew atop the ruin of the older empires. With any luck, man may gradually learn the lessons of the past, imparted from cycle to cycle, lifetime to lifetime, and generation to generation. As knowledge and virtue accumulate together, man may gradually advance his way through history with the steady increase of improvements in his daily life. Thomas Cole’s message does ultimately remain fundamentally pessimistic. However, Cole warns his audiences that they themselves once stood at the peak of another historical cycle. What they did in their lifetime would determine whether the point of consummation or destruction and desolation lay immediately ahead.
Politics held forth no hope to those who wished to break the cycle of history, but Cole saw in the land a timeless, cautious lesson of inestimable value. In his work, America is a frontier in history more so than a geographical expression. It is nature holding a mirror to humanity, showing his desperate desires for both liberty and power. On the frontier, man endlessly battled for power over nature and a wide variety of other enemies, each in turn barely scratching out a living from the Earth. Without sufficient virtue maintaining the moral integrity of the republic, the empire would surely rise to take its place.