The Business of Innocence
Thomas Cole did not paint a sweet little baby floating down a river because he was feeling sentimental. He painted the second version of The Voyage of Life because he was getting screwed out of his money.
It was 1842 and Cole was locked in a bitter fight with the heirs of his original patron. They held the first version of his masterwork hostage over a payment dispute. So he did what any self-respecting working artist would do. He painted a secret second set of the exact same series just to spite them.
Childhood is the first of these four massive canvases. An angelic figure steers a small boat out of a dark cave. The prow of the boat features angels gripping hourglasses. Time is already ticking even for an infant. The river flows through a lush green landscape that screams of the raw untamed promise of the American frontier. It looks like pure hope. But the reality of its creation was pure cutthroat business.
Cole eventually debuted this secret set at the National Academy of Design. It was a massive hit. Soon cheap engravings of this exact scene hung in millions of American parlors. Families across the country stared at the bright water and the guiding angel and saw their own optimistic destiny. They had no idea they were looking at an act of sheer professional rebellion. Cole poured his frustration into oil on canvas and accidentally created the defining visual metaphor for nineteenth-century America.
References
Cole, Thomas. The Voyage of Life Childhood. 1842. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
Powell, Earl A. Thomas Cole. Harry N. Abrams, 1990.
Truettner, William H. and Alan Wallach. Thomas Cole Landscape into History. Yale University Press, 1994.