Cole's The Voyage of Life
Thomas Cole's The Voyage of Life follows one traveller in a boat down the river of life, from a cave at dawn to the open sea at night, in four paintings.
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About the series
In Childhood a baby drifts out of a dark cave into a bright, flowering landscape, watched over by an angel. In Youth the young man takes the helm alone and steers towards a castle in the clouds. In Manhood the river turns into rapids under a storm, and in Old Age the boat, its figurehead gone, floats out onto dark water as light breaks through above.
Cole painted the first set in 1840 for a banker, Samuel Ward, who died before it was finished. It is now in the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York. He painted a second set in Rome in 1842, which is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
The four are meant to be read in order from left to right. Hung together they need a long wall. Youth, the brightest, also works on its own.
