Thomas Cole and the Pastoral
Thomas Cole was an artist who cared a great deal about the environment—about landscapes—and also, the Pastoral. Born in industrial England and immigrating to the United States in 1818, his feelings toward the bustling and industrialized Europe greatly influenced his art (Brody). In a lot of his work, post immigrating to the United States, Cole critiques the invasion of industry, and, popular among Americans at the time, expresses a longing for the pastoral.
Pastoralism, according to Lawrence Buell, “celebrates the ethos of nature/rurality against the ethos of the town or city” (Gifford). The pastoral mindset can commonly be found in urban areas, where people miss what they don’t have, such as the idealized concepts of living in open, hardly touched areas of land, herding livestock, and using what nature provides them.
In Thomas Cole’s Essay on American Scenery from 1836, his own views on rural versus urban areas are stated clearly as he critiques those who fail to see the beauty in American scenery, as opposed to industrial Europe (Cole). He claims that these opinions come “from those who have read of European scenery, of Grecian mountains, and Italian skies, and never troubled themselves to look at their own,” when the “unfamed American scenery” is so full of natural beauties, and what Cole calls, “wildness,” (Cole). One thing to note in his essay, however, is that he did not want people thinking he was lessening the “old world” of Europe to the Americas, but that he felt American scenery is often overlooked, and just as magnificent as Europe.
Rural vs Urban in The Course of Empire
One of Cole’s famous series of paintings, The Course of Empire, provides commentary on these pastoral ideals of his. In this series, Cole paints the same location five times (The Savage State, The Arcadian or Pastoral State, The Consummation of Empire, Destruction, and Desolation), depicting an imaginary European empire from pre-empire through its rise and fall. He painted these works from 1833-36 after returning from a trip to Italy, and these pieces can be viewed as a critique of how urban developments ruin the sought-after pastoral environments (Brody).
This is an interesting series, as more often, Cole painted landscapes of rural America while living in Catskill, New York, near the Hudson River (du Plessis). Coincidentally, The Course of Empire stands out as a European landscape, while also providing a strong connection to the way civilizations in America were becoming more and more urban.
Knowing how Cole felt about Americans’ Eurocentric attitudes, he was likely trying to make a point by showing how a location like the famous Roman Empire was too once wild and rural with its mountains and valleys—before it was made “urban.”
The Savage State
The Savage State is the first of the five paintings in The Course of Empire, where we can see the blooms of civilization, where natives hunt and dance around a fire. From a contemporary lens, the title of this piece jumps out as a problematic one, as the term “savage” is often derogatorily used against Indigenous people (Yellowhair). Additionally, placing a painting depicting a pre-colonized landscape with the succeeding Arcadian or Pastoral State suggests that the longed-for plane of human existence is not this “savage state,” and is instead what follows.
While acknowledging these implications, we know that Cole expressed in his Essay on American Scenery that he felt “the most impressive characteristic of American scenery is its wildness,” (Cole). By wildness, Cole was referring to land where “nature’s hand has never been lifted” and “the hand of man” has never touched, though in reality, we know that man has always existed in nature—like Cole shows in The Savage State (Cole).
This landscape, more than any other painting in the series, shows a time and place where nature and humans are coexisting on an equal level, by ways such as using natural resources without permanently destroying or altering them. This is a big difference from The Arcadian or Pastoral State, where you will notice that the tree to the far left of the painting—one of the largest figures in The Savage State—has been cut down.
More strikingly, in Desolation, man-made civilization has fallen and is overtaken by nature’s wildness again; however, there are no longer any humans in the painting. Because humans began to rely too much on the ways of urban living, once the empire fell, they had no use for the land anymore. The only living creatures in Desolation are the birds nesting on a column.
The Arcadian or Pastoral State
The Arcadian or Pastoral State is one of the calmer paintings of Cole’s series, most notably because of the way he depicts the sky. Comparatively, in The Savage State, half of the sky is full of dark colored clouds that protrude upward and are broken up by the brighter, gold and blue sky.
Others have stated that the darkness in the first painting represents an “unknown future,” though it could very likely be that the calmer sky on the left was intended to foreshadow the shift to the—idealized, for Arcadians—rural, pastoral lifestyle (du Plessis). This can be inferred further by viewing how the sky in The Arcadian or Pastoral State is practically clear, and similar in color to the left half of the sky in The Savage State.
Because of the title, it is easy to understand that The Arcadian or Pastoral State is depicting both the Arcadian and the pastoral. The Arcadian, similarly to the pastoral, refers to the romanticized version of rural living, first written about by the Greek, 3rd century BCE poet, Theocritus, context which has been used by many poets, dramatists, and artists—like Thomas Cole does here (The National Gallery).
There is not much conflict in this painting, and though a majority of the forests have been cut down to make towns and farmland, the humans seem to be enjoying themselves—emphasized by the child playing near the pond and the dancing in the far right. The “advancements” in civilization have given people the time to move on to new things, like math and new religions (the old man drawing mathematical figures in the sand and the large temple in the back).
Moreover, work is not depicted as a struggle, but more as a peaceful thing, pushing the romanticized, Arcadian and pastoral view of rural life. A shepherd stands with his flock of sheep as they graze in the grass, the concept of domesticating animals, controlling something that’s non-human for human benefit, is placed significantly in the center. It shows that there is still a harmony between the natural world and the human world, but it has been “tamed” or domesticated from the “wildness” seen previously.
The Consummation of Empire
In The Consummation of Empire, we have reached a time when urban civilization is at its peak. Mountains and forests have been replaced with white marble architecture, and humans are in almost every available space. Presenting a common romanticized view of what European empires may have been like, it is almost dreamy with the amount of whites, blues, and golds filling the space.
The most drastic changes in composition happen in this painting, as the color green is scarce compared to the previous paintings. Some of the only green we do see is in the plants that have been artificially potted and placed as decoration. This differs a great deal from before, when humans were living among the natural world, letting nature exist with them rather than strictly for them. In this urban environment, people are no longer living in harmony with nature, and are instead aiming to control it.
Also showing the distance humans have placed between themselves and the natural world is the cliff formation in the background. This landmark is visible in every painting from this series, helping us to understand it as the same location. In The Consummation of Empire, the cliff is the furthest away it has ever been, emphasizing how far civilization has strayed from the pastoral. The citizens of this empire’s values have shifted from that of a simple, rural, and quiet life to the bustling and industrial way of living. It is almost like their figures pollute the scene here, since they fill the streets and the bridge with their bodies. Their attention is on the victorious figure returning from some successful trip or battle on a vehicle drawn by an elephant, a symbol of power and dominance—something humans now have over their environment.
Destruction
Following The Consummation of Empire comes Destruction, when the empire falls. The human civilization we have seen previously is being destroyed by fire and violence, and bodies are spilling over the architectural structures, symbolizing how human-focused and destructive the environment has become.
Even nature is reacting to the aggressive scene; Cole shows how quickly urban civilization turns to chaos by painting a sky that is dark and invasive, and choppy waves that are no longer calm. In comparison to the partially stormy and wild sky in The Savage State, this sky is all-encompassing and an artificial product of the people’s wreckage.
Instead of a tree occupying the largest space in the right-hand section of the painting, like in The Arcadian or Pastoral State, we see a man-made sculpture of a warrior. Violence, power, and greed have become the largest focus of the empire, and there is no going back from it.
Everywhere you look is some form of gore as an effect of the empire, so when placed with a painting of the calm, rural lifestyle, Cole stirs a longing for the pastoral and pushes the idea that the rural is far more appealing than the horror we see here.
Desolation
In Desolation we see the landscape of the empire after it has fallen, when human beings are no longer a part of the picture. From the title of the painting we can infer that this piece is meant to evoke a sense of loneliness or unhappiness, but there is also a calmness brought on by the lack of chaos, and the soft lighting of the evening.
What Cole emphasizes though, and what is so desolate about this painting, is how much damage has been done to the land that was once so alive and grand, but is now permanently altered. In his Essay on American Scenery, following his claim of the grandeur of “wildness,” Cole underscores the value of the un-industrialized American lands because they have not yet become altered in the way the landscape in The Course of Empire has:
It is [American scenery] the most distinctive, because in civilized Europe the primitive features of scenery have long since been destroyed or modified—the extensive forests that once overshadowed a great part of it have been felled—rugged mountains have been smoothed, and impetuous rivers turned from their courses to accommodate the tastes and necessities of a dense population… (Cole).
Like Cole discusses, the waters in Desolation are running deeper in the land than they had been in the beginning, and every forest, every tree that was once standing pre-empire, is gone.
However, Cole emphasizes here, whether intentionally or not, the power nature has in enduring without human interference. The original landscape may be destroyed, but in Desolation we can see the greenery start to grow again over the rubble. Humans may have felt powerful with the extravagance and seemingly permanent structures they were building, but in the end, it all fell back into nature’s hands.
A Conclusion of The Course of Empire
In The Course of Empire, Cole emphasizes this cycle of industrialization that is inevitable, like the hours passing in a day. The Savage State begins the series at dawn while the sun rises and then we move from early morning to afternoon and all the way to evening in Desolation, when the cycle has ended and civilization is gone.
After witnessing the industrialization of Europe during the early 1800s and the beginning stages of that process in the United States, this project was a way for Cole to create a visual of what industrialization can do to a landscape.
Cole himself wasn’t living in an urban space when he made these paintings, but, unfortunately, Catskill was beginning to face the threat of urbanization. For example, around the 1820s, the leather tanning industry began booming and many of the trees in the Catskill forests were stripped of their bark and started to die (Loete).
Cole’s appreciation for the pastoral stems from wanting people to appreciate the American scenery and the natural beauty that can be found in it, and these works are his way of—in a way—fearmongering others into being aware of the damage of industrialization.
And though the idea of the pastoral is romanticized, Cole uses it as a way to show how Eurocentric ideals are also romanticized, and how one can be more damaging than the other. However, the cyclical nature of the series enforces this idea that human beings will follow this pattern again and again, in many different places, all over the world.
Work Cited
Brody, David. “Thomas Cole: Eden to Empire and Ed Ruscha: Course of Empire.” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, 2018, journalpanorama.org/article/cole-ruscha/. Accessed 28 Apr. 2025.
Cole, Thomas. Desolation, 1836.
—. Destruction, 1836.
—. Essay on American Scenery. American Monthly Magazine 1, Jan. 1836.
—. The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 1834.
—. The Consummation of Empire, 1836.
—. The Savage State, 1834.
du Plessis, Alicia. ““The Course of Empire” by Thomas Cole – Study the Landscape Paintings.” Artincontext.org, 13 July 2022, artincontext.org/the-course-of-empire-by-thomas-cole/. Accessed 28 Apr. 2025.
Gifford, Terry. Four Kinds of Pastoral. Pastoral, New York, NY, Routledge, 16 Oct. 2019, pp. 1–13. Accessed 2 May 2025.
The National Gallery. “Arcadia | Glossary | National Gallery, London.” Www.nationalgallery.org.uk, http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/arcadia. Accessed 5 May 2025.
Yellowhair, Veronica. “The End of Savage – the Writing for Change Journal.” The Writing for Change Journal – a Digital Space for Community Writing, 5 May 2022, writingforchangejournal.org/the-end-of-savage/. Accessed 28 Apr. 2025.
Sprockets and Springes 