Nature's beauty was not its only
characteristic to receive the praise of the Romantics. They viewed nature as the ultimate power in
the world, a kind of deity or earthly representation of the heavenly throne in
might, majesty, and truth. It's hard to
describe a love for nature, but it is something which, I think, most people can
easily enough understand. Nature is a
powerful, awesome force that is worthy of humankind's respect; but for the
Romantics, reverential views toward nature took on pseudo-spiritual
qualities. Thomas Cole's epic series,
called The Course of the Empire, comes across didactically, almost like a
sermon.
The series was painted in the 1830s
by American painter Thomas Cole. It is a
series of canvases that follow a linear storyline about the progression of time
and, through it, man's brevity and nature's constancy. Each image in the series has a title,
explaining the timeline of this "course." In order, they are: 1. Savage State, 2.
Pastoral State, 3. Consummation of the Empire, 4. Destruction, 5. Desolation.
1. Savage State
2. Pastoral State
3. Consummation of the Empire
4. Destruction
5. Desolation
The Romantics had a fear that
increased industrialism would lead to a modern dystopia; and that machines
would replace man. They feared the opening
of steel factories and mills; their polluting influence on nature was viewed as
a kind of "rape of the land."
The mechanization of mankind through industrialism, the mindless
production of materials for socioeconomic, consumerist ends, was the pervading
dread of the Romantics, and paintings like this—of Nature taking back what's
hers—are good examples of the deification of nature during this time. In Thomas Cole's series, nature is
incorruptible, unbeatable, and eternal; nature is God. When the later Victorians came and
"killed off" nature, so to speak, questions of the existence of God
immediately followed, and what Matthew Arnold described as the withdrawal of
faith brought us into the Modern era.
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