Thomas Cole and the Architecture of Hubris

Thomas Cole did not paint a glorious celebration of human achievement when he created The Consummation of Empire. He painted a death rattle. It was 1836 and America was high on its own supply of manifest destiny. Cole looked at the sprawling ambition of his young nation and saw Rome burning. He took a massive canvas and built an impossible marble fantasy designed to dwarf nature itself. This is the peak of a civilization just seconds before a bloody collapse.

The sky is a toxic brilliant blue. A conqueror struts across a bridge of triumph in a parade of unchecked imperial greed. But Cole leaves us a secret in the madness. Down in the corner sits a tiny philosopher. This figure watches the arrogant emperor pass by with the world at his feet. The philosopher knows what the emperor refuses to see. Gravity always wins. The marble will crack. The gold will melt. The water will run red.

When Cole unveiled this behemoth at the National Academy of Design in New York the audience probably gasped at the sheer scale of the architecture. They were meant to feel small. They were also meant to feel warned. Cole used oil on canvas to scream at a country racing toward a cliff. He knew that any empire obsessed with conquering nature eventually ends up buried by it.

References

Cole, Thomas. The Course of Empire The Consummation of Empire. 1836. Oil on canvas, 130.2 x 193 cm.

Miller, Angela. The Empire of the Eye Landscape Representation and American Cultural Politics. Cornell University Press, 1993.

Parry, Ellwood C. The Art of Thomas Cole Ambition and Imagination. University of Delaware Press, 1988.