Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Cole was clear that the emphasis on subject matter, the story—eventhe idea or ideal—took precedence over any sensuous or atmospheric evocationsof the artist. In a world that insisted on strong realism, the paradox wasthat Cole was nonetheless an imaginative dreamer and an idealizing artistwho sought to express the inner essence rather than the outer appearanceof nature. He wrote poetry of “nature’s purer love divine” and was oftenas sensitive and artistic a painter of nature in words as he was in pigments.His painting thus offered an initial statement of one of the recurring dramasin American art—a polarity of the real and the ideal (Figure 2).Cole preferred imaginative “compositions” rather than the specific“views” of nature favored by most of his patrons. He preferred to re-arrangewhat he saw in the natural world in order to convey a more definite,dramatic, or concentrated mood of nature that would make a strongerimpression. He filled many books with sketches from the field but alwaysselected and recombined them in the studio to produce his usually somewhatgrander landscape paintings. It was not so much the evidence of his sightas his mind’s eye picture of a scene that he tried to convey through hisartwork. He wanted to imitate “true nature” and not “accidents nor merelycommon imitation that takes nature indiscriminately.” After returning froma European tour in 1832, Cole turned much more strongly to allegoricalpainting on the passage of time, from which arose his famous series fromthe 1840s on the four ages of life, The Voyage of Life. It was felt that Cole hadFigure 2. Thomas Cole, The Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch),1839, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.103