The Course of Empire (paintings)

The Course of Empire is a series of five paintings created by the English-born American painter Thomas Cole between 1833 and 1836, and now in the collection of the New-York Historical Society.

The series depicts the growth and fall of an imaginary city, situated on the lower end of a river valley, near its meeting with a bay of the sea.

It is notable in part for reflecting popular American sentiments of the times, when many saw pastoralism as the ideal phase of human civilization, fearing that empire would lead to gluttony and inevitable decay.

Though not based on any specific city, the architecture, sculpture and costumes are clearly in the styles of Greco-Roman classical civilization, and the historical arch traced in the series can be loosely compared to the History of Rome.

Revived styles of classical architecture had become the standard for most major public buildings in the United States, especially Washington DC, enabling the series to be read as a forecast or warning for American civilization.

Cole quoted lines from Canto IV in his newspaper advertisements for the series:[1] First freedom and then Glory – when that fails, Wealth, vice, corruption …A quote by Bishop Berkeley also can be used to describe the series: Bishop Berkeley -"Westward, the course of empire takes its way …"Cole designed these paintings to be displayed prominently in the picture gallery on the third floor of the mansion of his patron, Luman Reed, at 13 Greenwich Street, New York City.

[4] The first painting, The Savage State, shows the valley from the shore opposite the crag, in the dim light of a dawning stormy day.

A hunter clad in skins hastens through the wilderness, pursuing a fleeing deer; canoes paddle up the river; on the far shore can be seen a clearing with a cluster of tipis around a fire, the nucleus of the city that is to be.

1., which may be called the 'Savage State,' or 'the Commencement of Empire,' represents a wild scene of rocks, mountains, woods, and a bay of the ocean.

On the farthest side of the bay rises a precipitous hill, crowned by a singular isolated rock, which, to the mariner, would ever be a striking land-mark.

The chase being the most characteristic occupation of savage life, in the fore-ground we see a man attired in skins, in pursuit of a deer, which, stricken by his arrow, is bounding down a water-course.

Various activities go on in the background: plowing, boatbuilding, herding sheep, dancing; in the foreground, an old man sketches what may be a geometrical problem with a stick.

Yet the construction of the warship and the concerned mother watching as her child sketches a soldier, herald the emerging imperial ambitions.

Furthermore, a tree stump is seen in the right foreground, a reflection of the dark nature of man already developed, and a foreshadow to the fate of the growing settlement.

A joyous crowd gathers on the balconies and terraces as a scarlet-robed king or victorious general crosses a bridge connecting the two sides of the river in a triumphant procession.

The conqueror, robed in purple, is mounted in a car drawn by an elephant, and surrounded by captives on foot, and a numerous train of guards, senators, etc.

Before the doric temple on the left, the smoke of incense and of the altar rise, and a multitude of white-robed priests stand around on the marble steps.

The statue of Minerva, with a victory in her hand, stands above the building of the Caryatides, on a columned pedestal, near which is a band with trumpets, cymbals, etc.

On the right, near a bronze fountain and in the shadow of lofty buildings, is an imperial personage viewing the procession, surrounded by her children, attendants, and guard.

The architecture, the ornamental embellishments, etc., show that wealth, power, knowledge, and taste have worked together, and accomplished the highest meed of human achievement and empire.

[7]The fourth painting, Destruction, has almost the same perspective as the third, though the artist has stepped back a bit to allow a wider scene of the action, and moved almost to the center of the river.

[6] In the foreground a statue of some venerable hero (posed like the Borghese Gladiator) stands headless, still striding forward into the uncertain future.

[a] In the waning light of late afternoon, the dead lie where they fell, in fountains and atop the monuments built to celebrate the affluence of the now fallen civilization.

Allusive of the two boys near the fountain in the previous painting of the series, similarly clad in red and green, the discord may have foreshadowed a civil war.

Along the battlements, among the ruined Caryatides, the contention is fierce; and the combatants fight amid the smoke and flame of prostrate edifices.

A female is seen sitting in mute despair over the dead body of her son, and a young woman is escaping from the ruffian grasp of a soldier, by leaping over the battlement; another soldier drags a woman by the hair down the steps that form part of the pedestal of a mutilated colossal statue, whose shattered head lies on the pavement below.

The landscape has begun to return to wilderness and no humans are to be seen; but the remnants of their architecture emerge from beneath a mantle of trees, ivy, and other overgrowth.

A lonely column stands near the fore ground, on whose capitol, which is illumined by the last rays of the departed sun, a heron has built her nest.