|
||||
, Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which is available for purchase in the Corcoran Shop. :: Click here to purchase this catalog online :: View more Prints and Drawings
|
|
||||
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 Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which is available for purchase in the Corcoran Shop. :: Click here to purchase this catalog online
|
|
||||
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 Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which is available for purchase in the Corcoran Shop. :: Click here to purchase this catalog online
|
Copyright © 2008, Corcoran Gallery of Art |