“The Course of Empire” by Thomas Cole

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Five Parts of the Painting
Analysis of the Painting
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Thomas Cole has created his sequence of paintings “The Course of the Empire” between 1834 and 1836. In total, the sequence consists of five paintings, such as The Savage State, The Arcadian or Pastoral State, The Consummation, The Destruction, and The Desolation. The series of these paintings presents the growth and collapse of a city, of empire to be more exact; this empire was invented by Cole, which allowed attributing different meanings to it. Each of the paintings surprises with its uniqueness and expressiveness, but the sense of the paintings is even more striking. “The Course of the Empire” changes the ideas of American people about other nations (Indians) and their own society revealing their fear of progress due to losing connection with the nature.

Five Parts of the Painting

Each of the five parts of the paintings presents a separate stage of the city’s development. The Savage Stage shows the beginning of the empire’s formation. It depicts a valley during the stormy day. A figure of a Native American man can be observed in the lower left part of the painting. The Arcadian or Pastoral State depicts a bright sunny day. The standpoint seems to have moved more down towards the river since the crag is more on the left side in the painting than where it was in the savage state. It presents a shepherd and people engaged in different activities, such as children playing or men going down to the river. In the third painting, the point of view moves towards an opposite sea shore which is in the consummation of Empire. A procession of people can be seen from the raised perspective of this painting; it seems to be headed by an emperor, king, or a victorious general dressed in a scarlet rob; the procession crosses a decorated bridge that connects two sides of the river. The Destruction of the Empire in the fourth painting portrays the obliteration of the city, though the painting allows a much bigger scene of action. The empire is getting ruined as a raging storm in the distance approaches the defenseless city overthrown by a convoy of enemy warriors. A fancifully decorated bridge that was used for the ceremonial procession is badly damaged and the residents flee in all the directions as the enemy fires upon them killing the residents and rapping their women. (Noble 321) The eventual destruction of the empire and the resultant remains of it are best illustrated in the fifth painting. In the dim illumination of a dying day, the remains of the city can be seen. The painting presents a devastated and almost fully destroyed city with the river and the surroundings being calm, as if getting ready to restoration.

Analysis of the Painting

Just like any other painting, each part of the “Course of Empire” means far more than what can be seen on the first glance. Most of people do not notice the hidden sense of the paintings, though, in fact, every single stroke of the paint brush is full of meaning, because it helps the artist express his ideas. For instance, the first painting, The Savage State, returns American people to the question of Native Americans, despite the fact that some figures at the painting look more European than American. Native Americans have always been a part of the American history, though the way the Americans used to percept them differed throughout the centuries. By the 1830s, until they were driven out from the country, Native Americans used to shape the American ideas about history. There were numerous debates regarding Native American’s past among the American scholars who studied the life of Indians in the antebellum period; the only thing these scholars agreed in was the Indians’ future or, to be more exact, its absence. Indians have always been viewed by Americans as a part of natural, not human history; they were more of species that was condemned to extinction:

The notion that species could disappear from the earth as a result of natural processes and quite apart from any biblical flood was one of the remarkable developments of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century natural science, straining the relationship between science and religion. (Conn 30)

However, when the painting was created, Indians were no longer viewed from this perspective. They started to be accepted as a separate people which once has existed like any other nationality. Moreover, they started to be treated as the first people who lived at the territory of the contemporary America and who also had rights for this land (though this fact is still hard to admit for even modern people). The only disagreement which remained about this issue was whether the Indians would be able to assimilate into Euro-American society or whether they were going to extinct like a species in a biological sense. The matter is that Indian people have a rather specific culture of which they are proud of and which they are reluctant to share with other people. The possibility of their assimilation with other nations was rather low and they could hardly accept the changes which America of the 19^th century was going through. The Savage State may be regarded as one of the means which has not only changed the Americans’ perception of Indian people, but perpetuated this change and passed it to the subsequent generations. Owing to representation of Indian people in the painting, it becomes clear that closer to the nineteenth century they started to be regarded as a part of American history.

What’s more, the painting allowed American people to change their attitude towards themselves and their society. All the five paintings from the sequence “The Course of Empire” are believed to symbolize the formation of American society. These paintings depict the stages of its development, emphasizing the mightiness of America and forecasting its further prosperity, as well as they show the destructiveness of the commercial empire. The Savage State is followed by the painting depicting the second stage of development when “aboriginal canoe and hut are changed for the busy village … The savage is transformed into civilized man, rising from grosser superstitions into higher forms of natural religion, progressing in science and the arts.” (Dekker 97) “The Course of the Empire” in whole depicts the social progress; it can be marked by the omission of the agricultural stage any society usually goes through during its development. Supposedly, the agricultural stage should have been depicted in the third painting after the pastoral stage. Instead of this, Cole moved to the fourth, commercial, stage at once and his third painting from this sequence, “The Consummation of Empire,” is crowded with people leading a luxurious life. According to Dekker, “in omitting the agricultural stage, Cole was also bypassing the society which Jefferson and other stadialists believed [to be] most favorable to republican government,” because he kept to an idea “that commercial empire would be the ruin of both the American republic and the American landscape.” (Dekker 97) This all testifies to the fact that Cole’s painting “The Course of Empire” served as a sort of prediction for American society; it was meant to notify it about the destructiveness which could be inflicted by the commercial relations. This sequence of paintings expresses the fear of progress or, to be more exact, the fear of what stands behind this progress. Most of the modern inventions proved to be self-destructive and the movies constantly show what the world would be like if the scientists do not stop at the achieved. It seems that this is what Cole was trying to show – the inevitability of destruction in case the society develops too rapidly and its facing its collapse when the innovations will stop serving their inventors right. In a more narrow sense which is closer to the beliefs of American society of the 19^th century, the painting “was intended as an allegory on the dangers of the imperialism” (Murray 200); Cole tried to warn American people about the hazard they would, as he believed, face when trying to establish commercial relations with other countries. Thus, “The Course of Empire” was supposed to change the American people’s attitude towards themselves and their society.

Lastly, in this cycle of five paintings Cole explored the link between the nature and the future of the republic (Lewis 95) trying to show what the loss of connection with nature would lead to. His allegorical representation of the destruction of America helped him to avoid responsibility for destroying the common ideas about American society; there is hardly a person who can affirm that “The Course of Empire” concerns namely Americans, because the paintings are more likely to represent the republic in the ancient world. The vivid contrast between the first three canvases and the remaining two ruins the American people’s idea about the mightiness of their state: “The first three canvases of The Course of Empire told a story familiar to Americans in the 1830s – the rise of a great empire from origins in primitive wilderness.” (Lewis 95) The first canvas suggests the infancy of culture, the second “shows a domesticated nature harmoniously poised between wilderness and civilization” (Lewis 95); the third canvas depicts the prosperity of the American society. However, this is where the imagination of American people of the 1830s stopped. They sacredly believed in the mighty state they lived in and never wanted to admit the possibility of its destruction. When discussing “The Course of Empire,” Lewis quotes Miller stating:

Cole’s The Course of Empire brought to light in striking fashion an anxiety shared by many of his contemporaries: in the words of historian Perry Miller, the secret, hidden horror that its gigantic exertion [of American empire building] would end only in some nightmare of debauchery called civilization. (Lewis 96)

It was hard for “a nation confident of its Christian civilizing mission and its future greatness” (Lewis 96) to comprehend such a historical defeat. It was no less hard for them to understand how such a developed nation will admit to be destroyed; American people’s conviction about the might of their state, as well as their unwillingness to believe in what the painting was indeed expressing, led to rejecting of the real truth. Cole’s audiences objected that these paintings concerned namely American republic of the 1830s, but his letters and papers prove that “The Course of Empire … graphically revealed the catastrophic results of falling away from nature.” (Lewis 96) Therefore, by this sequence of paintings Cole intended to show that namely separating from nature was going to make the American republic vulnerable.

Conclusion

Cole’s cycle “The Course of Empire” consists of five paintings which, if taken together, symbolize different stages of American republic’s development. This cycle seems to have changed the American society’s values and perceptions regarding themselves and other nations (Indians in particular). Thus, the first painting from the sequence reveals that after 1830s American people started treating the Indians as a part of their history, rather than a part of their nature, for their representation in the painting shows that the Americans admitted this fact. Moreover, the paintings show social development of the society and help to change American people’s attitude towards themselves through breaking their concept of the Republic’s mightiness. Finally, the paintings help to explore the connection between the nature and the future of the republic through showing that ignoring the nature is going to lead the republic to the destruction. Each of the paintings has a separate meaning, but when they are viewed as a whole, they present a long story of the empire’s development and collapse; according to Cole, this was an American empire.

Works Cited

Conn, Steven. History’s Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century. New York: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Dekker, George. The American Historical Romance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Lewis, Michael L. American Wilderness: a New History. New York: Oxford University Press US, 2007.

Murray, Christopher J. Encyclopedia of the romantic era, 1760-1850. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2004.

Noble, Lous L. The Life and Works of Thomas Cole. New York: Black Dome Press, 1853.

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“The Course of Empire” by Thomas Cole

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