The Course of Empire

The Course of Empire is a monumental series of five paintings completed by Thomas Cole between 1833 and 1836, commissioned by the New York merchant and patron Luman Reed for his private gallery. Each canvas depicts the same imagined valley and coastline across successive epochs of civilization: from primeval wilderness, through pastoral simplicity and imperial splendor, to catastrophic destruction, and finally to silent, overgrown desolation. An unchanging mountain anchors the background of every panel, the one constant witness to human ambition and its consequences.\n\nAt its heart, the cycle is an extended meditation on the rise and fall of civilizations—a theme as relevant to the young American republic as it was to ancient Rome. Cole, an English-born painter and founder of the Hudson River School, was not simply celebrating the American landscape but issuing a warning: that even the most powerful societies are subject to the same cycle of growth, excess, and collapse. The paintings are richly layered with symbolic detail—the arc of the sun moves across the sky from panel to panel, seasons shift, and the human relationship to nature swings from subordination to conquest to erasure. Reed died in 1836 before the series was finished, but his family ensured its completion. The entire group was acquired by the New-York Historical Society in 1858, where all five paintings remain on permanent display.