The Voyage of Life
Thomas Cole and Romantic Disillusionment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2731286 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joy S Kasson (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1975 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 42 |
| Publication date | 1975-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2711894 |
| OpenAlex | W2317010754 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
THE ALLEGORICAL PAINTINGS OF THOMAS COLE, THE LEADING AMERICAN landscape painter of the 1830s and 40s, have always presented problems to critics. Contemporary writers praised Cole's allegories for their high moral tone, but the artist found few patrons willing to buy them. Cole bitterly lamented the need to continue what he called pot-boiling, painting simple landscape views with no higher message, complaining that the public wanted things, not thoughts, and protesting, I am not a mere leaf-painter.' Present day critics, however, tend to agree with Cole's public, appreciating his exuberant Catskill scenes as an important step in the development of a native art and a romantic interest in nature, and deprecating the large, didactic allegories of which Cole was so proud: The Course of Empire, The Past and the Present, The Departure and the Return, the unfinished Cross and the World and The Voyage of Life. Yet these paintings do represent a landmark in our cultural history, as E. P. Richardson stiffly acknowledged.2 They are expressions of their time, and can yield insights into the emotional and intellectual milieu which produced them. In particular, The Voyage of Life, the last allegorical series Cole completed and the one which won greatest contemporary popularity, sheds light on a dilemma of the romantic imagination which Cole shares with his American contemporaries Hawthorne, Poe and Melville, as well as his mentors Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats. The Voyage of Life consists of four large paintings, approximately four and a half feet by six and a half feet in size, in which the human life cycle is allegorized as a journey down a river: Childhood, Youth, Manhood and Old
Art · Psychoanalysis · Romance · Sociology · American Environmental and Regional History · Psychology · Travel Writing and Literature
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |