The Voyage of Life: Youth

Cole was the founder of the Hudson River School, and he used landscape to tell moral stories. Look at the details: the river bends sharply out of sight at the right, and if you follow it you can see that it turns toward rough, dark rapids that the young man cannot see from where he stands. The palace of clouds is painted with soft, luminous edges that make it look real and impossible at the same time. Cole's handling is precise in the foreground foliage and increasingly misty toward the distance, a technique he used to draw viewers deep into the picture. The four paintings are best read in order: Childhood, Youth, Manhood and Old Age, with the light changing from dawn to night.

Cole painted the first set for a New York banker in 1840, then, frustrated that it was kept from public view, he painted this second set in Rome in 1842 and exhibited it widely. It was enormously popular, and engravings of the series hung in countless American homes. The Gallery acquired all four in 1971, and they hang together. Notice the tiny hourglass in the figurehead's hands, a detail that recurs in each canvas as the sand runs lower.

Did You Know? Cole painted this entire second set of four canvases in Rome in 1842 because the owner of the first set would not let the public see it.