3. Thomas Cole’s Journeys to Italy
3.3. Second Journey: 1841–42
The second journey to Europe, which was again planned as a round trip, started in his native country England and included again a stay in Italy. With this trip, Cole had obviously some goals in mind, first to gather visual material on the countryside for further works, to visit important museums, such as the Louvre in Paris, in order to learn of the old masters and probably also to expand his network of European clients.94
According to his journal entry for November 9th, 1841, Thomas Cole and
89 Dunlap, 1918, p. 155.
90 Parry, 1988, p. 127.
91 Ibid.
92 Dunlap, 1918, p. 155.
93 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey [1786–1788], London: Penguin, 1962, p. 103 (Venice, October 12th, 1786).
94 George Washington Greene, “Cole,” in: Biographical Studies, New York: G. P. Putnam, 1860, pp.
74–120, here p. 103.
American artist Thomas P. Rossiter (1818–71) had reached Rome on that day.95 There, Cole was pleased to obtain a place for resting as well as a studio for painting.96 Two days later, on November 11th, Cole wrote home informing his wife that he was finally in Rome.97 By this time, Cole had already begun making chalk marks upon a large canvas as well as finished a small sketch for a picture of The Fountain of Vaucluse.98 On November 30th, Cole wrote to his wife mentioning that the picture of Vaucluse was not yet completed, though much developed.99 In the same letter, Cole told his wife of his decision to repaint The Voyage of Life anew according to memory and with the help of the several tracings and sketches he had with him.100
As stated by George Washington Greene (1811–83), the American consul in Rome between 1837 and 1845, in a chapter of his Biographical Sketches (1860), dedicated to Thomas Cole, the painter had sought out for himself a “quiet little studio in the Babuino, with a bedroom on the same stairway.”101 This was the studio in which Cole finished the second set of The Voyage of Life and a small landscape of an autumn scene from somewhere near Catskill in the winter of 1841–42.102 Besides painting steadily before his easel, Cole took many sight-seeing and sketching trips into the country, beginning with stopping by Sant’Onofrio, where Torquato Tasso, the Renaissance poet, was buried.103 Greene offered an overview to the sites Cole visited, which included, among others, the Vatican and the Capitoline Hill, the rich landscapes of the park of the Villa Doria Pamphili and the church of Sant’Onofrio on the Gianicolo, the Villa Borghese and its park on the Pincio and, finally, the Campagna at
101 Ibid; Greene, 1860, p. 104. Located in the very heart of historic Rome, Via del Babuino is located near the Corso and connects Piazza del Popolo and Piazza di Spagna.
102 Parry, 1988, p. 265.
103 Ibid.
the outskirts of the city. 104 Cole also attended soirées in order to make acquaintances.105 As he wrote in a letter to his wife on February 6th, 1842, for the duration of a month or six weeks, practically every night had been occupied in making social calls or at dinner gatherings and evening parties, including ones held by Prince Torlonia and by the French ambassador.106 The artist also reported in this letter that the first and third pictures of The Voyage of Life were finished, yet his second was still just a “castle in the air.”107
As soon as Cole’s first three pictures were done and the fourth almost finished, American artist Luther Terry (1813–69) lent his studio to Cole in the Vicolo dell’Orto di Napoli, near Via del Babuino, for a short while so that the series could be displayed favorably.108 George Washington Greene arranged to invite Danish Neoclassical sculptor Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770–1844), then a septuagenarian, to be one of the first official guests to view the works.109 In a letter of April 2nd, Cole mentioned to his wife that the second set of The Voyage of Life was practically completed following merely four months of labor, and it was making a very good impression on all those who had seen it.110 He also revealed to his wife his intentions to set off for Sicily the next week.111
While Cole prepared to leave for his trip to Sicily, the second set of The Voyage of Life was exhibited in Rome, after a few weeks of private showings in Luther Terry’s studio.112 This journey to Sicily, remaining for around six weeks, was made in the company of Samuel James Ainsley (1806–74), an English artist and fellow
landscape painter.113 The two men departed Rome in early April, making the trip by land to Naples to begin with, then by boat over the Tyrrhenian Sea to Palermo.114 In Palermo, a guide by the name of Luigi, a muleteer he later mentioned in Sicilian Scenery and Antiquities, three mules, and one more horse were appointed for touring the entire island.115 The primary stop for them following Palermo was at Segesta, where Cole did drawings on the 22nd and 23rd of April (fig. 18).116 Before moving on to Syracuse, the ancient capital, on the eastern side of the island, Cole and Ainsley went along the southern coast of Sicily to see the ruins at Selinunte and Agrigento.117 By May 9th, the two had made it to Catania and decided to ascend Mount Etna early in the morning before sunrise.118 In 1842, Cole wrote a poem that echoes his experiences of the ascent.119 Two years later, a detailed report of the adventure is to be found in Cole’s essay Sicilian Scenery and Antiquities; an abridged version of the poem is included in this text.120 In order to show the mules the path over the lava beds, an additional guide and a man carrying a lantern were required.121 On May 10th, Cole and Ainsley reached the peak of the volcano just in time to see the rising sun.122 After an hour or so at the summit, the two artists began their way downwards, taking a slightly different path from the one taken upwards.123 This route brought them beyond an ancient altar as well as along the border of a large crater at the side of the volcano known to be the Val del Bove (Valley of the Oxen).124 Cole and Ainsley continued
113 Ibid. See also Noble, 1856, pp. 324–329.
114 Parry, 1988, p. 270.
115 Ibid. Cole, 1844, p. 109. See appendix no. 3.
116 Parry, 1988, p. 270.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid. See also the vivid description of the ascent in Noble, 1856, pp. 325–329.
119 Marshall B. Tymn (ed.), Thomas Cole’s Poetry. The collected poems of America’s foremost painter of the Hudson River School reflecting his feelings for nature and the romantic spirit of the nineteenth century, York, Pennsylvania: Liberty Cap Books, 1972, pp. 134–135. See also appendix no. 2.
120 Cole, 1844, pp. 110–113. See appendix no. 3.
121 Parry, 1988, p. 270.
122 Ibid.
123 Ibid., p. 271.
124 Ibid.
northward to the town of Taormina, where Cole formed drawings of the view from the Graeco-Roman theater on May 16th.125 Lastly, the two men went across the northern border of the island until they arrived at Palermo, ending the tour of Sicily hurriedly.126
Cole had returned to Rome from his trip by the evening of May 20th.127 The next day, May 21st, Cole wrote to his wife, sending word to her of his plans for homecoming and informing her on the progress of The Voyage of Life series.128 Neatly put together with a brief sketch of his journey, the main intent of his letter was to report to his wife the state of his own physical health, which was much improved due to the Sicilian trip.129 Cole also mentioned his intention of bringing his four pictures of The Voyage of Life to England.130
Before leaving Rome on May 27th, Cole suddenly realized that transporting The Voyage of Life to England would have been terribly costly, while the risk of damage to the works was also a concern.131 As an alternative, sending the paintings by sea, a enough, Cole took the fastest way northward, by water from Rome towards Genoa, then onwards by land reaching Milan.134 During his stay in Milan, Cole saw Leonardo
da Vinci’s Last Supper in its ruined condition within the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in addition to various drawings of the Renaissance master in the Ambrosian Library.135 In June of 1842, Cole passed the Lago Maggiore in order to arrive in Switzerland and onwards to England,136 marking the end to Cole’s second, and final, journey to Italy.
Apart from the fact that the travels described above provided him with invaluable memories, Cole returned home with a great number of oil sketches and notebooks filled with pencil drawings all executed on site. With these drawings, he not only memorized outlines and single motifs of the respective location, but he also tried to capture the atmosphere of the moment, filling his notebooks with descriptions of the situation on the spot. These visual recollections offered him a veritable treasure for his work, from which he benefited for many years.
The trips to Italy also brought change to Cole’s art. After seeing the ancient ruins of Italy during his journey, Cole was inspired to create lofty themes in his artwork.137 Especially after his first trip, the architectural details in the artist’s sketchbooks became more and more evident in his paintings.138
135 Ibid.
136 Ibid.
137 Blaugrund, 2016, p. 22.
138 Ibid.
4. “The greatest of all landscape painters”—Thomas Cole and Claude
While Cole’s writings—his letters, diaries, and essays—reverberate a persistent admiration for the greatest of the old masters, one artist is more often mentioned and more highly praised than all others, the French landscapist Claude Lorrain (1600–82).
Cole’s works—and not least those representing Italian sceneries—owe much to the French landscape painter. Cole’s contemporaries, too, felt his close proximity to Claude. It was, therefore, only understandable that someone would call him
“American Claude,” as Samuel B. Ruggles did in a letter to William H. Seward dated July 24th, 1841.139 In order to better understand the form and substance of Cole’s Arcadian landscapes with ruins on the one hand and his concept of the ‘sublime’ on the other, it seems appropriate to highlight further his relation to the master.
Claude Lorrain, the earliest great French artist to specialize in landscape painting, is regarded as one of the most distinguished masters of ideal landscape (figs. 6, 7, 8).140 Claude’s contribution to ideal landscape painting was his unique way of rendering light to unify his compositions and to create a particular atmosphere in the scenery.141 He contributed to setting autonomous landscape painting on an equal level with history painting, the highest form of Western painting, thus elevating the status of landscape painting.142
Having emerged in Venice about 1510, ideal landscape painting subsequently
139 “My dear governor, Our ‘American Claude,’ (Tom Cole) at my instigation has painted, in his peculiar autumn style, a picture of the great gorge of the Genesee at Portage.” Quoted after Parry, 1988, p. 222 (University of Rochester Library).
140 Édouard Kopp, Capturing Nature’s Beauty: Three Centuries of French Landscapes, exhibition catalog, Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2009, p. 10; Arne Neset, Arcadian Waters and Wanton Seas:
The Iconology of Waterscapes in Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Culture, New York [et al.]: Peter Lang, 2009, p. 32.
141 Michael Kitson, “Claude (le) Lorrain [2003],” in: Grove Art Online, in:
http:////www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000018011 (retrieved May 20th, 2018).
142 Richard Rand, “Between Nature and Culture: an Introduction to Claude’s Drawings,” in: Richard Rand, Antony Griffiths and Colleen M. Terry (eds.), Claude Lorrain: the Painter as Draftsman, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006, pp. 21–43, here p. 22.
developed as an artistic genre presenting perfected natural scenery.143 Elements from classical antiquity, like ancient ruins, are often included within the landscape of such works.144 The fusion of nature and classical ruins evoke nostalgic sentiments for the past and recall a lost paradise, Arcadia, a legendary idyllic region strewed with destroyed monuments.145 The inspiration for ideal landscapists is the pastoral beauty of the Roman Campagna, a countryside on the outskirts of Rome where remains of antiquity pervade.146 Roman ruins were characteristic motifs in Claude’s works.147 A favorite of the British aristocracy, Claude was widely appreciated in England throughout the late 17th and 18th centuries.148 The obsession for Claude in England was so great that it would not be overstating to claim that almost all his works, including paintings, drawings and prints, have been in English collections at one time or another.149 It is known that by 1830, around two-thirds of Claude’s paintings were in English collections.150
While in the era of Enlightenment, concepts of Nature and landscape were developing, Claude’s works became, for a period of time, the measure for landscape painting.151 This is also echoed in Cole’s words when, for example, confessing to Dunlap:
143 Kitson, 2003.
144 Neset, 2009, p. 32.
145 Argyro Loukaki, “Greece: ancient ruinous landscapes, aesthetic identity, and issues of development,”
in: Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 30, no. 1, 2004, pp. 147–164, here p. 148.
146 Neset, 2009, p. 32; Sonnabend, 2011, p. 17.
147 Paul Zucker, Fascination of Decay: Ruins: Relic, Symbol, Ornament, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Gregg Press, 1968, p. 47.
148 Moses Foster Sweetser, Titian. Guido Reni. Claude Lorraine, Riverside, Cambridge: Houghton, Osgood, 1880, p. 82; Timothy J. Standring, “Claude Lorrain. San Francisco, Williamstown and
Washington,” in: The Burlington Magazine 149, no. 1250, French Art, May, 2007, pp. 356–357, here p.
356.
149 Sonnabend, 2011, p. 17.
150 Kitson, 2003.
151 Sonnabend, 2011, p. 17.
“Claude, to me, is the greatest of all landscape painters: and, indeed, I should rank him with Raphael or Michael Angelo. Poussin I delighted in, and Rysdael for his truth, which is equal to Claude, but not so choice.”152
And in another context, he says:
“The works of the Old Masters have been my greatest study and admiration.
In Landscape my favourites are Claude and Gaspar Poussin; but not to the exclusion of others.”153
In that regard, he compares the work of Claude and the French-Italian artist Gaspard Dughet (Gaspard Poussin; 1615–75).154 Cole, moreover, confronted the works of the two fellow countrymen Claude and Nicolas Poussin, much to the benefit of the former:
“He [N. Poussin] has not the glowing and elaborate beauty of Claude.”155 Here, he underlines Claude’s way of using the marked chiaroscuro which gives the landscape a shimmering quality. When reading Cole’s judgement of William Turner’s later works, which he considered “to have an artificial look” and to “be fine, but […] not true,”156 it becomes once more obvious, what he was interested in: “Nature, in her most exquisite beauty, abounds in darkness and dullness; above all, she possesses solidity.”157 In Cole’s eyes, the late Turner lacked the gravitas that was imminent in Claude Lorrain’s paintings.
Claude’s paintings of pastoral landscapes (figs. 7, 8) served as models for imitation among many artists, less in Italy and France, but all the more in England and America.158 Cole was much indebted to Claude’s characteristic compositional devices.159 The use of golden light and framing motifs seen in Cole’s paintings were
152 Dunlap, 1918, p. 156; Noble, 1856, p. 171.
153 Noble, 1856, p. 120.
154 Gaspard adopted the name Poussin from his master, Nicolas Poussin. On Dughet see Marie-Nicole Boisclair, “Dughet [Poussin], Gaspard,” in: Oxford Art Online, in:
http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000023968?rskey=PQ452s&result=2 (retrieved May 20th, 2018).
155 Noble, 1856, p. 304.
156 Noble, 1856, p. 114; Dunlap, 1918, p. 158.
157 Noble, 1856, p. 114.
158 Kitson, 2003. Sonnabend, 2011, p. 17.
159 Parry, 1988, p. 191.
deeply influenced by Claude.160 It is known that Cole carefully studied Claude’s works in the museums.161 Another important source for his followers, with Cole being no exception, was the large set of Claude’s drawings after his own paintings published as aquatint etchings in the so-called Liber Veritatis (now British Museum, London;
fig. 6); what was meant by Claude as a means against forgery, accelerated subsequently the dissemination of his compositions.162
Cole’s Italian Scene, Composition (fig. 5), executed after the first journey to Italy in 1833,163 owes much to Claude’s pastoral landscapes, a fact that can be demonstrated by a comparison with the latter’s Pastoral Landscape with the Arch of Titus of 1644164 and Pastoral Landscape with the Ponte Molle of 1645 (figs. 7, 8).165 Claude’s scenes represent an ideal realm inspired by topographical elements of the Roman Campagna, in which he integrates—as in a capriccio—architectural elements borrowed from other contexts, such as the Arch of Titus and the Ponte Molle. These newly invented landscapes with recognizable items recall a somewhat familiar yet unattainable far-off place. Claude does not attempt to make his sceneries realistic, but instead idealizes them. His views are, therefore, not topographically accurate in a strict sense.
In his Italian Scene, Composition, Cole, too, combines landscape elements he had found at the actual sites of the Roman Campagna with the architectures reminding the
160 Ibid., p. 192. Standring, 2007, p. 356.
161 December 14th, 1829; Parry, 1988, pp. 101, 118 (Cole, 1829 notebook, pp. 16–17, Cole Papers, NYSL).
162 Claude Lorrain, Liber Veritatis. Or, A Collection of Two Hundred Prints, After the Original Designs of Claude le Lorrain, in the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, Executed by Richard Earlom, in the Manner and Taste of the Drawings [...], 2 vols., London: John Boydell, 1774–77;
additional vol., London: Thomas Davison, for Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1819. Michael Kitson and Marcel Roethlisberger, “Claude Lorrain and the Liber veritatis, I–III,” in: The Burlington Magazine 101, 1959, pp. 14–24, 328–337, 381–388.
163 Italian Scene, Composition, 1833, oil on canvas, 95.2 × 138.4 cm, The New-York Historical Society, inv. 1858.19.
164 Pastoral Landscape with the Arch of Titus, 1644, oil on canvas, 102 × 135 cm, Private Collection;
inscribed indistinctly and dated 1644.
165 Pastoral Landscape with the Ponte Molle, 1645, oil on canvas, 74.5 × 98 cm, Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery; inscribed lower left: “Claudio Roma 1645.”
round Temple of Vesta in Tivoli on the left hand side and the Aqua Claudia on the right part of the painting. The overall composition of the painting that distinguishes a foreground with small figures, a hilly middle ground with ruins, and a background with high mountains standing out against a clear sky recalls Claude’s way of structuring his pictures. The sections are parallel to the picture surface.
Cole’s painting shows an apparent influence of Claude’s chiaroscuro effect. The bold contrasts of light and shadow evidently emphasize the pictures’ division into three main sections: the darker foreground, the lighter middle ground, and the clear background.
The arrangement of figures in the foreground is a device Cole learned from Claude. The minuscule staffage figures make the entire natural scenery appear monumental. Cole includes ruins in his painting and combines these ruins with bucolic scenes that contain shepherds and livestock. Such designs are found in Claude’s work, too.
Cole also picked up the way Claude handled the light in his painted scenes.
Chiaroscuro was used to highlight the details and to make contrasts. For example, lighter colors on the surface of figures or animals help outline their shape; dark-toned trees set against the bright-colored sky form strong contrasts. Like Claude, Cole would also manipulate the light on his picture plane to make it softly glow through the painted trees, creating a warm atmosphere felt around the leaves of the partly transparent tree.
Cole unquestionably inherited from Claude his way of constructing compositions, which, as a result, became Cole’s own formula for creating serene, harmonious scenes, a painting strategy that would recur in Cole’s art.
5. Thomas Cole’s Notion of Arcadia