Lessons in Human Nature from Thomas Cole's Course of Empire
A series of five 19th century landscapes that tell us about ourselves and our destiny
This past week, I was thinking about Thomas Cole’s Destruction, which I see frequently used in articles and on social media attached to conversations about the Fall of Rome in the late 5th century. You’ve probably seen it before.
The only problem —this isn’t Rome at all. That’s certainly not the Tiber, and both that mountain in the distance and the colossal marble statue of the warrior are utter works of fiction (although Cole may have been referencing both the colossal statue of Nero that gave the Colosseum its name or the statue of Constantine that crumbles (and likely had a bronze torso).
But I won’t further belabor the point with images of dismembered Classical statuary. The painting mentioned comes from the series The Course of Empire, painted by Thomas Cole (originator of the Hudson River group that included later artists I love like Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran) in the mid-1830’s. Intended as a narrative series, these five paintings offered a warning concerning American economic, military and geographic expansion. So let’s begin.
The Savage State
The first painting in the cycle is called The Savage State (note that distant mountain with rock perched atop —it's a main character). The relationship between humans and nature is asymmetrical here —nature has dominion over man.
The sky is reminiscent in scale and motion to J.M.W. Turner's Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812). Opaque clouds swirl over the top of the frame, creating a canopy over small figures. Nature unfettered, untamed, and an existential threat to human existence and flourishing.
Turner painted a lot of work like this, leaving figures as small compositional elements subjugated to natural force. Cole is actually painting contemporaneously with an older Turner, who dies in 1851.
One significant difference, however, is that Cole’s humans are not cowering against the might of nature, they’re warring against it for survival. It’s important to note that the “Man v. Nature” paradigm that is so frequently mentioned in literature and art is a battle of territory. Man’s fight with nature is to establish a cushion where survival is not the sole preoccupation.
The second painting is The Pastoral State. Here, the weather has receded to tranquility. The struggle between the two parties of humanity and nature has reach a truce. Human beings have established a toe-hold within nature's domain and live in equilibrium with their environment while pursuing work and leisure. The mountain in the background, which is a constant throughout the series, is now visible around its base (whereas in The Savage State clouds obscure any approach to its slopes). I take this as the opening to higher thoughts and spirituality. Once our task of survival is not our sole preoccupation —room is left for transcendent concerns.
Such as you see in these detail shots, study, spirituality, leisure and work are now available to the population as a place to spend time.
The last of these images shows a tremendous fire contained within a stone ring. The perfect illustration of taking nature’s destructive potential and harnessing it to the control and benefit of the population.
The entire paradigm of The Pastoral State is interestingly similar to the kind of "cooperative relationship" you see reflected in rural Japanese society, where the "satoyama" is a village nestled by a mountain and the villagers live in harmony with nature.
Photo by Matthieu Zellweger (2019)
For the Ghibli fans out there, the exploration of this concept of equilibrium is explored in My Neighbor Totoro and its dissolution is explored in Pom Poko.
The third painting is Consummation, wherein nature is all but subdued. The shores of this river are covered with architecture, and the only remnants of the preceding natural landscape are the peaks of distant mountains. The shift in dominance is complete. Man has conquered nature. The pastoral state of the prior painting may have looked idyllic and balanced, but maintenance is not a human compulsion the way that tool-building and problem solving is. Satisfaction and gratitude are only a natural human reaction when we have just emerged from bad circumstances to better ones. Imagine walking into a warm house from a long walk on a frigid day. Immediate satisfaction, but how long do you remember it before a new problem to be solved emerges, promising an even more customized experience of your day or larger life?
This is how magnificent empires are built. The slow conquest of new problems. Even if those problems are increasingly small when compared to the original preoccupation of survival. Satisfaction and gratitude will hinder or even halt progress towards domination. Learning to forget the previous success and treat smaller problems as just as serious as the previous ones is the way that cultures propel themselves forward to dominion. Consummation shows the peak of that dominion.
Now the sky is swirling again. Fire that had previously been contained and controlled is now controlled by one party at the expense of another. This is Destruction, the penultimate painting in the series. The ability to wield nature means that we also have the power to weaponize it. Our ability to forget satisfaction and treat new problems as just as serious as old ones means that with external enemies defeated, the differences between us feel severe and pronounced. Once the differences between us are the most visible and pressing problems to solve, we will take whatever means is necessary to resolve them.
This is, as seen in the painting, at our own expense.
A frail, makeshift wooden bridge, supported by a dead tree, supports the rampaging armies charging over the last link between the opposing riverbanks. Its function is now to reach the enemy. And soon this river will again be an impassable barrier to man. That detail is so fascinating to me because what human construction more fundamentally expresses communal victory over nature like a bridge?
And the headless statue, wielding a broken buckler and with the sword lost from his arm —urges us mindlessly onward.
Then, Desolation. The final painting.
The stone remnants are the skeleton of the previous empire. And with creeping vines and calm skies, nature slowly reclaims. Patient, it lies dormant during human dominance and then reasserts itself through endurance rather than strength.
The Savage State depicted mankind in the throes of challenge. For their own survival, they competed with nature to assert their own will.
The Pastoral State represents the culmination of that effort and its success.
Yet Cole's paintings offer us a perspective on human ambition that suggest it is ultimately self-destructive. The instinct to fight against extinction may prevent us from a natural state of contentment. There's always a new problem to be solved, and those problems are evaluated not by the standards of our ancestors but of the more comfortable environment they built for us.
And so our differences become more pronounced until we cannot bear them, and are willing to destroy even the comfort and success that gave us the luxury of noticing those differences.
Humans want more, and better. It's in our nature. How we navigate and tame that drive may, according to Cole, the difference between satisfaction and self-destruction on a tremendous scale.