Cole often provided text to accompany his paintings, but did not comment on The Titan's Goblet, leaving his intentions open to debate.

A 1904 auction catalog continued this theme, writing "the spiritual idea in the centre of the painting, conveying the beautiful Norse theory that life and the world is but a tree with ramifying branches, is carefully carried out by the painter".

[4] The painting's title (given by Cole on the back of the canvas) seems to support this idea, as if much time had passed between the creation of this goblet and the current scene.

He wrote, "There [the goblet] stands, rather reposes upon its shaft, a tower-like mossy structure, light as a bubble, and yet a section of a substantial globe.

As the eye circles its wide rolling brim, a circumference of many miles, it finds itself in fairy land; in accordance though with nature on her broadest scale...

He was however drawn to Turner's Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus (1829), making two sketches of the painting and another study for a possible treatment of his own, which did not come to fruition.

The titular cyclops Polyphemus is pivotal to the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey, and Cole's interest in the subject demonstrates his openness to "the creative possibilities of such a Mediterranean scene".

[6] Meanwhile, as Cole researched themes for his painting series The Course of Empire, he would have encountered the story of Mount Athos in Vitruvius's Ten Books on Architecture.

As Parry writes, "the precedent of a classical architectural fantasy on this scale supplies an alternative to the natural assumption that the Titan's goblet was actually made by a giant who simply left it behind".

[8] But a literal rendition of this image may not have suited Cole's art: being a landscape artist, he would have been more comfortable expressing it only topographically, avoiding the need to render a massive stone human form.

Visiting the home of his patron Luman Reed, an avid art collector, Cole would have seen a still-life painting "with Goblet and Lemon" by the 17th-century Dutch artist Willem van Aelst.