The Springtime of Our Demise
Thomas Cole did not paint a pretty spring day just to give the wealthy elite something nice to look at over tea. He painted a warning. It was 1836 and Jacksonian America was tearing across the continent with a ravenous appetite. Luman Reed commissioned an entire five part series for his private gallery and Cole used the opportunity to preach the inevitable doom of greed. The Arcadian or Pastoral State is the second breath in that five part sigh.
It shows humanity at a sweet spot of peace with wild nature. Everything is idealized and soft and bathed in the gentle light of spring. Shepherds tend their flocks and philosophers draw shapes in the dirt. But Cole knew better. He knew peace never lasts when profit is on the line. He anchored the background with a craggy mountain peak that stays fixed throughout all five paintings in the series. It stands there like a silent judge as empires rise and fall beneath its shadow.
When he exhibited the oil on canvas work at the National Academy of Design in New York that fall the message was clear to anyone willing to see it. Enjoy the pastoral harmony while it lasts because the fires of expansion always burn the forest down eventually. Humanity cannot help but consume itself. Cole put the grim truth right there on a canvas measuring roughly thirty nine by sixty three inches. We simply chose to admire the trees and ignore the warning.
References
Cole, Thomas. The Course of Empire The Arcadian or Pastoral State. 1836. Oil on canvas.
Parry, Ellwood C. The Art of Thomas Cole. University of Delaware Press, 1988.