It was during his stay in Rome in February of 1832 that Cole undertook trips to the rural area surrounding the city. Ancient Roman ruins became now a common subject of his landscapes. One of the iconic landscapes in central Italy to be identified by poets and artists with the mythic Arcadia was, in fact, the Campagna just outside Rome. Especially the southeastern plain with the Alban Hills in the background was a popular location for artists and tourists since the 18th century.212 What makes the vista even more impressive is the apparently endless line of the ancient Roman aqueduct, the Aqua Claudia (AD 38–52), a part of the water conduit above the ground, which in antiquity provided the capital with water.213 This monument, which in the 18th and 19th centuries had already been in a ruinous state for a long time, was considered as a spectacular testament to the sophisticated building skills and culture of Roman imperial time.
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein’s Goethe in the Roman Campagna from 1786–87 (Frankfurt, M.) shows the plane with the aqueduct and the lining Alban Hills in the far background (fig. 12).214 Consequently, Thomas Cole was not the first to discover the scenery as a major subject for his paintings. He created, however, a composition of the view which, as will be shown, became groundbreaking for the
212 See an early account by the Irish travel writer Thomas Nugent (c. 1700–72); Thomas Nugent, The Grand Tour, or, A journey through the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and France, vol. 3, London: Jay Rivington and Sons, 1778, pp. 292–293.
213 Built under the emperors Caligula and Claudius in AD 38–52, the Aqua Claudia was one of the
“four great aqueducts” of ancient Rome. On the monument, which nowadays is incorporated into an archaeological park, see Samuel Ball Platner, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, ed. by Thomas Ashby, London: Oxford University Press, 1929, pp. 22–23 (available online
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/PLAT OP*/Aqua_Claudia.html (retrieved March 4th, 2017). Thomas Ashby, Jun., “The Four Great Aqueducts of Ancient Rome,” in: The Classical Review 14, no. 6, 1900, pp. 325–327; Deane R. Blackman, “The Volume of Water Delivered by the Four Great Aqueducts of Rome,” in: Papers of the British School at Rome 46, 1978, pp. 52–72.
214 Oil on canvas, 164 × 206 cm, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, M. On this painting see especially John F. Moffitt, “The Poet and the Painter: J. H. W. Tischbein’s ‘Perfect Portrait’ of Goethe in the Campagna (1786-87),” in: The Art Bulletin 65, no. 3, 1983, pp. 440–455.
reception of this landscape.
6.1. The Aqueduct near Rome in Saint Louis (1832)
In his painting Aqueduct near Rome (Saint Louis) of 1832, Thomas Cole depicts a monumental view of the partly collapsed ancient water bridge in the Roman countryside (fig. 3).215 The work was commissioned by a certain Charles Lyman of Waltham, Massachusetts, who at that time stayed in Rome as tourist.216 While little more than the name of this person is known, the time of execution can be narrowed down to Cole’s stay in Florence in July, 1832. There is a remark about it in a letter to Daniel Wadsworth from Florence; Cole wrote: “I am now engaged on a view of some ruined Acqueducts [sic] in the Campagna of Rome.”217 In a letter of August 28th, 1834, William Dunlap urged Cole to, finally, submit a text for his History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States: “you must not leave me so abruptly—something must be said of the Aqueduct picture—and others—your impressions of Italy & Italian art.”218 In the published third volume, Dunlap quotes Cole as saying: “In that three months [that is June to August, 1832; my remark] I painted the Aqueduct picture, the view of the Cascatelles [sic] of Tivoli, and several others.—O that I was there again, and in the same spirit.”219
The composition of the landscape is clearly divided into three main parts, the
215 Aqueduct near Rome, 1832, oil on canvas, 113 × 171.2 cm, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in Saint Louis, inv. WU 1987.4.
216 William L. Coleman, “Spotlight Essay: Thomas Cole’s Aqueduct near Rome (1832),” in: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Spotlight Series, February, 2016, in:
http://kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/files/spotlightFEB16.pdf (retrieved January 7th, 2017); Dunlap, 1918, p. 154.
217 McNulty, 1983, no. 26 (Florence, July 13th, 1832), p. 57.
218 William Dunlap to Thomas Cole, August 28th, 1834, Thomas Cole Papers, Courtesy of the New York State Library (Albany), Manuscripts and Special Collections, Archives of the of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, roll ALC-1 (Letters of Cole, 1833–1834). Here quoted after Lyons, 2005, p. 63, no. 23.
219 Dunlap, 1918, p. 155.
front foreground, the middle ground, and the far background. The subject of the painting, the Aqua Claudia, runs from the left to the right side and from the foreground to the background, gradually diminishing and, thus, functioning as a visual link between the image’s planes. Along the ridge of a gently sloping hill in the middle ground, the ruins of the aqueduct stand in the sun, fencing the wide, grassy meadow on the right-hand side, which is to some extent kept in darker colors as it is in the shade. As part of the aqueduct is broken into fragments, especially in the middle ground, openings of various sizes gap the fence-like structure. Towards the left end of the destroyed aqueduct, a succession of arches remains intact and stretches into the far distance. A decayed windowed watchtower, the medieval Tor Fiscale, built into the aqueduct rests at the broken monument’s right end, giving in to the moss and weeds that grow relentlessly through its stout masonry walls. Moss and weeds are also gained on top of the fragmented aqueduct.
The tower’s vertically uprising mass provides a compositional counterbalance to the string of the aqueduct leading into the depth of the picture plane. Underneath, a pile of fallen capitals and columns lies against the foot of the tower and at the borders of a small pond, gathering greenery over time. Below the dismantled pile, across the pond, a tiny skull sits on the piece of land next to it, serving as a memento mori. Atop a rock parallel to the lower border of the picture partly covered with plants on the far right corner in the foreground, a goat stands solitarily facing the unseen sun, a livestock that perhaps belongs to the shepherd who is herding his flock in the meadow near the broken aqueduct in the middle ground.
The background of the painting is lined by the massive range of the Alban Hills that loom over the landscape, towering above the man-made aqueduct.220 A crescent
220 The painting has been discussed by Eleanor L. Jones in the respective catalog entry of The Lure of Italy, however, with an incorrect location of the view “toward the Sabine hills;” Stebbins, 1992, p. 260.
moon hangs slightly to the mountaintop’s upper right, fainted by the strong sunlight coming from the right side of the picture. Finally, patches of clouds drift in the clear skies just above the massive mountains, filling the space in the picture’s upper right, thus bringing balance to the entire composition.
6.2. Genesis of the Composition
Cole used to prepare his paintings with the help of drawings and sometimes with oil sketches. The Temple of Segesta with the Artist Sketching (fig. 1) shows the painter in action. We do not know how many sketches the artist produced for this painting. It is likely that a part of them are lost today.
The picture titled Campagna di Roma (fig. 13) is one of Thomas Cole’s preparatory oil sketches for his Aqueduct near Rome in Saint Louis (fig. 3).221 It renders the final composition of the painting in Saint Louis quite precisely, while the rough technique is typical for a plein-air oil sketch.222 A noticeable difference is the color temperature and the related atmosphere in both works. There is an overall murky impression in this muddy-colored picture, in which the impasto technique was adopted. Paint was thickly applied and heavy, clearly visible brush strokes were used in the making of this picture. Dark colors, such as black and brown, dominate the painting with the exception of bright yellow and white in certain areas. In contrast to the executed painting in Saint Louis, there are no pencil lines to be found under the oil paint.223
221 Campagna di Roma (Study for Aqueduct near Rome), 1832, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 21.59
× 29.21 cm, Alexander Gallery, New York; signed on the lower left: “T.C.”.
222 See the analysis of Eleanor Jones Harvey, in: Ead. (ed.), The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature, 1830–1880, exhibition catalog, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998/99, Dallas, Texas: Dallas Museum of Art in association with H.N. Abrams, 1998, p. 115.
223 Ibid.
Just like the final painting, the middle ground of the picture is taken up by a hilly plain with the ruins of the Aqua Claudia aqueduct on the hilltop. The leftmost dark, rectangular shape, the tallest element on the paper, is the Tor Fiscale, connected to the destroyed aqueduct on its left. The lumpy structures at the center of the painting represent the fragments of the broken aqueduct. The height of the aqueduct reduces as it stretches towards the right side of the picture.
Resembling the final painting, the background of the study is also composed of a range of mountains and a cluster of clouds against the sky; however, the area of clouds and the color of sky differ. In the final picture, clouds drift above the mountains in the bright blue sky on the right side of the painting, whereas in the study, the cluster of clouds hangs over the tower in the grayish sky on the left side. The arrangement of the ruined aqueduct in the middle ground and the mountain range in the background is very similar to that of the final production, with the study being much more simplified, and the final painting, more detailed and well-developed.
Elements such as the bricks and square windows of the tower, greenery over both the tower and aqueduct, and arches of the aqueduct are well-defined in the final work, while the shapes in the oil study lack particularity. At the right corner of the sketch’s foreground, a man in red, along with several goats he leads with his stick, was later replaced by a solitary goat standing atop a rock in the final painting. Where the rest of the foreground is covered mostly by black paint with smears of brown color in the study work, a small pond with vegetated edges and a tiny skull take form in the final work. Due to its dark palette and the vivid cloudy sky, the oil-sketch makes a more somber impression.
A second oil sketch, today at the New Britain Museum of American Art (fig. 14),
can be associated with the painting in Saint Louis.224 Both works are about the same size and show a rather similar composition, the tower with the aqueduct running across the picture plane, a strip of raised terrain in the foreground with figures and the chain of the Alban Hills standing out against a bright sky. The work shares the same sketchy manner with the painting in New York showing thick brushstrokes. Stronger chiaroscuro contrasts and the rising moon imply that the sketch grasps the same view at a later hour of the same day. In the final work (fig. 3), Cole highlighted the atmosphere of a warm and sunny evening with the application of bright colors contrasting with warm shadows.
6.3. Roman Campagna, a Later Replica
In 1843, right after his second trip to Italy in 1841–42, Thomas Cole returned once again to the motif of the Aqua Claudia in a painting today in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (fig. 4).225 Roman Campagna shows a close-up of the Aqua Claudia now without the Tor Fiscale, focusing just on the ruined aqueduct. As it is a view taken nearer to the aqueduct, the fragmented monument is enlarged in comparison. Cole obviously changed the time of day. Whereas the late afternoon sunlight hits the surface of the broken aqueduct from the right side of the picture in Aqueduct near Rome (fig. 3), in Roman Campagna the morning sunshine approaches from the opposite direction. Here, a shepherd boy is also seen herding his flock near the gap formed by the collapsed aqueduct; one of his goats, separated from the rest, is standing alone above a rock at the far right, again facing the sun, which, this time,
224 Oil on paper on canvas, 20.64 × 31.12 cm, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, inv. 1988.31.
225 Thomas Cole, Roman Campagna, oil on canvas, 82.6 × 122 cm, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Bequest of Clara Hinton Gould, inv. 1948.189.
appears from the other direction. Once again, the large Alban Hills lie in the background, dividing the land below and the skies above.
With his two ‘portraits’ of the Aqua Claudia in Saint Louis and in Hartford (figs. 3, 4), Cole considerably influenced later views of the monument. This becomes evident when comparing Camille Corot’s The Roman Campagna, with the Claudian Aqueduct, probably of 1826 (fig. 15), with a similar view by George Inness (fig. 16), executed in 1858, certainly under the impression of Roman Campagna (fig. 4).226 Cole’s protagonist is the huge Roman monument, an aspect which is clearly echoed by Inness.
226 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, The Roman Campagna, with the Claudian Aqueduct, probably 1826, oil on paper, laid on canvas, 22.8 × 34 cm, National Gallery, London, inv. NG3285; George Inness, Roman Campagna, 1858, oil on canvas, 50.8 × 76.2 cm, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, inv. 1947.08.