In a cycle of five paintings titled The Course of Empire, Cole showed the rise and fall of a great nation. The final canvas is a scene of violent destruction unsurpassed even by Game of Thrones.

When one first encounters “The Course of Empire,” the Consummation seems to loom over the rest of the paintings. It is the largest (130 cm x 196 cm, to the others’ 100 cm x 161 cm), and in Thomas Cole ...

One of the reasons most art writing is not worth reading—and there are several reasons—is the irritating habit of critics of personalizing their subject and making it all about themselves.

So muses Lord Byron in Canto IV, stanzas 108-109 of his narrative poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which features a disillusioned hedonist’s Solomonic impressions as he travels the world and finds ...

There is no better illustration of the life cycle of a great power than The Course of Empire, a series of five paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the New-York Historical Society.Cole was a founder ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The American landscape painter Thomas Cole painted series of paintings in the 1830s and ‘40s dealing with the “Course of Empire,” and the “Voyage of Life,” themes ...