ON VIEW

(For biographical information on Thomas Cole, see entry under Cole, Mill Dam on the Catskill Creek 2002.20.19)

Thomas Cole visited Boston in 1837 and secured several orders for pictures. In his list of commissions, Cole identified Landscape with Tower in Ruin with the terse notation:
"To be painted for Mr. Eliott [Samuel Atkins Eliot (1798-1862), Boston's mayor between 1837 and 1839, later a member of Congress, and father of Charles W. Eliot, future president of Harvard University] the mayor of Boston a small upright picture 22 ½ x 18 ½ inches seen in the frame-my own choice of subject." For this, he chose to paint a reprise of the central portion of his allegorical work The Past, which, with its pendant The Present (1838; Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Massachusetts), had been exhibited in New York City to much acclaim in December 1838.

Upon receiving the painting in October 1839, the mayor wrote to Cole to express his pleasure: "This time your anticipations were perfectly right & have been fully realized. The picture is very beautiful, & suits me exactly. It has been already much admired & I promise myself much pleasure from examining it more carefully than I have yet had time to do. I shall be ready to honor your draft for $300 whenever you send it." Although Cole's work had been seen in Boston before, Landscape with Tower in Ruin did much to enhance the artist's reputation in that city, owing in part to the prominence of its owner and his willingness to place the picture on public view. In 1842, it was the only painting by Cole to be included in the Boston Artists' Association's group exhibition at Harding's Gallery, but it must have excited a fair measure of interest there, for the next year, Cole's works-including his celebrated The Voyage of Life-dominated the show.

In Landscape with Tower in Ruin, the view Cole presents is imaginary and, as do many of his compositions from this period, draws upon settings observed in Europe and America while tapping into the vogue for the Gothic style then sweeping the country. The tower's pointed arches and quatrefoil piercings are Italian Gothic; the goatherd in the center foreground is a figure type that occurs frequently in Cole's Italian views. Yet the autumn foliage, and particularly the twisted oak at lower left, evoke American scenery, as does the distant prospect of the river.

The theme too, was a favorite of Cole's who in canvas after canvas paired the wonders of the natural world with human creations to relate, in his words, the "decaying grandeur" of the "storied past." The tower, a motif Cole used to symbolize man's vain ambitions, was once glorious; here, its heroic contours have been broken down by assaults from rain, wind, and sun, and it is overgrown with vines. Once the fortress of powerful armies, it has become the home of a flock of birds, and a herd of goats grazes peacefully at its base. In the foreground, a goatherd (himself a creature of nature), gazes at the once majestic token of human achievement silhouetted against a golden sunset. In some of Cole's canvases, this theme-nature's surpassing power and futility of human ambitions-is presented as a stern moral. Here, however, the intimate scale and tender palette create a nostalgic image of pastoral serenity and innocence.

CT

REFERENCE

Bruce W. Chambers. "Thomas Cole and the Ruined Tower." Currier Gallery of Art Bulletin, 1983, pp. 2-32.