On view
Wilmerding Pavilion
The Anschutz-Hunt Family Gallery
The Course of Empire–The Savage State,
ca. 1834
More Context
Handbook Entry
Purchased from the artist’s granddaughter at his studio in Catskill, New York, this is Thomas Cole’s second oil sketch for the initial painting of his renowned five-part cycle, <em>The Course of Empire</em>. In a letter from the artist to Luman Reed, his patron for the series, Cole described his vision: "The FIRST PICTURE, representing the savage state, must be a view of a wilderness — the sun rising from the sea, and the clouds of night retiring over the mountains. The figures must be savage, clothed in skins, and occupied in the chase. There must be a flashing chiaroscuro, and the spirit of motion pervading the scene, as though nature were just springing from Chaos." Meant to evoke civilization’s inchoate beginnings, <em>The Savage State</em> was followed by four images of the same imagined locality as it developed into a magnificent city, only to be destroyed and returned to wilderness, providing a sublime, if defeatist, allegory of history, progress, and the nation state.
Information
ca. 1834
North America, United States, New York, Catskill Mountains
- "Recent accessions", Record of the Museum of Historic Art, Princeton University 1, no. 1 (1942): p. 19., p. 19
- F. J. Mather, "American paintings at Princeton University," Record of the Museum of Historic Art, Princeton University 2, no. 2 (1943): p. 2-15., pp. 11-12 (illus.)
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 100 (illus.)
- Barbara T. Ross, "The Mather years 1922-1946," in "An art museum for Princeton: the early years", special issue, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 55, no. 1/2 (1996): p. 53–76., fig. 12, p. 63
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 10, fig. 6
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 263 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 279
