| This elegiac pair of imaginary landscapes are among the most beautiful and
moving of Thomas Cole’s entire career. He had been intrigued with the concept
of pendant paintings that explore before-and-after themes from early in his career
(he completed his first such pair, The Garden of Eden and Expulsion
from the Garden of Eden in 1828). Although he devoted much of his creative energy in the
1830s to a great, five-part cycle, The Course of Empire, which he completed in
1836, his interest in paired paintings was rekindled by a commission for two
landscapes from William P. Van Rensselaer of Albany, New York, later that year.
Other than specifying that the paintings depict morning and evening, Van Rensselaer
left the details up to the artist, which, Cole noted, “is gratifying to
me, and is a surety for my working con amore.” Creating these paintings
would indeed be for Cole a labor of love. . . .
- Franklin Kelly, Curator of American and British Paintings
National Gallery of Art, Washington |
Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from
the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
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