Description:
allegory; landscape; water; watercraft; man; vegetation; outdoor
Label Text:
Thomas Cole, considered the founding artist of the Hudson River School, believed that landscape painting could embrace a moral and religious mission. In his allegorical series titled The Voyage of Life, he portrayed a single figure representing Man at four points along the “river of life”: childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. In this study for the third and most turbulent of the four paintings, Cole sketched out a landscape of furious rapids, jagged rocks, and a dramatic, stormy sky. He described middle age as a time “when experience has taught us the realities of the world” and “we lift from our eyes the golden veil of early life.”
In the final version of this painting (illustrated here), Cole added his voyager adrift in a raft, as well as a guardian angel in the light at the upper left and a host of demons hovering overhead in the dark clouds.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1950.13 |
