The Price of Nostalgia
Thomas Cole did not paint Dream of Arcadia because he loved ancient history. He painted it because America was being paved over and he hated it. It was 1838. He had just come back from Italy with a head full of romantic ruins and a bitter resentment for the smoke-choked skies back home. The Industrial Revolution was tearing up the wild landscape he worshipped. So he built a time machine out of oil and canvas.
He shoved ancient Greek temples into wild overgrown valleys. He bathed the whole scene in a warm golden lighting that would eventually define the famous atmospheric glow of the Hudson River School. It was not a real place. It was a desperate critique of rapid American industrialization. Cole wanted people to look at this sweeping untouched world and feel a profound sense of loss for the nature they were currently destroying.
The irony was incredibly thick. The wealthy elites who were getting rich off the dirty modern cities paid massive sums for this exact fantasy. They bought this nostalgic escape to hang in their parlors so they could ignore the smog outside their windows. The oil on canvas stretches wide at roughly thirty-eight by sixty-three inches and offered them a perfect window into a pristine past. When it was unveiled at the National Academy of Design that year the industrialists clapped politely. They bought the critique and completely missed the point.
References
Cole, Thomas. Dream of Arcadia. 1838. Oil on canvas. 98.1 x 160 cm.
Parry, Ellwood C. The Art of Thomas Cole Ambition and Imagination. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988.
Wilmerding, John. American Light The Luminist Movement 1850 to 1875. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1980.