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In a verdant green landscape, a stone castle sits on a tree-lined hill in the distance in front of a high, craggy mountain peak while eighteen armored knights ride toward us along a bridge and path in this horizontal painting. The people whose faces we can see have pale skin. The knights are small in scale within the vast landscape, and they all hold long spears. Their procession is led by a knight on a white horse, which wears a gold bridle and lattice-like blanket. That knight has a ruby-red cloak over his armor, and his helmet has a red feathered plume. The other knights wear cloaks in tan, pale pink, or red, and some of their horses are covered with light brown blankets. Near the lower left corner, the path they ride on passes behind a tall, narrow plinth. The faces of the plinth are carved with pointed arches under ornate molding. A person atop the pointed, roof-like top of the structure stands facing away from us, wearing a robe. A gold halo is affixed to her head over long hair, and we see the small head of a baby over one crooked elbow. Near the base of the plinth, the horse at the head of the procession shies away from a man who stands to the side of the road a little farther along, near the bottom center of the painting. That man has a long white beard, and the brim of his hat is pushed back over his forehead, possibly pinned to the crown of the hat. He wears a loose brown robe and sandals, and a satchel is tied around his waist. He holds up one hand, palm out, toward the knights as he looks in their direction, facing our left in profile. In the other hand, he supports a tall staff with a knob at the center and a palm frond tied to the top. In that hand, he also holds a cross hanging from a string of red beads. As the path continues to our right, it passes an arched, free-standing structure, which has a fountain on the side facing us. A man holding a curved staff and a woman, both wearing togas, stand near the structure, looking at each other. On our side of the structure, a goat walks toward the fountain. A river extends behind the structure, back across the composition, and under the bridge leading from the castle. Tall or craggy trees grow along the side of the path as it winds into the distance to our left, and over the hill that rises to the crenelated castle complex. Touches of white and tan suggest people lining the walls of the castle and the tower over the drawbridge. A flat-topped, grassy butte rises beyond the castle, and a waterfall cascades over the edge near the drawbridge. Steep, hazy mountains rise sharply in the deep distance. Dashes of black paint indicate birds flying over the treetops near the castle, and miniscule white dots on the plateau could be grazing sheep. A town lines a body of water at the foot of the castle in the distance. White sailboats float in the water or are pulled up close to the shoreline. Opalescent white clouds curl up over the mountain top and ring the upper peaks in an otherwise clear, ice-blue sky.

The Departure, 1837

Thomas Cole

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 71

Thomas Cole turns the landscape into a backdrop for a medieval tale in The Departure, one of a pair of luminous paintings set at sunrise and sunset. The lord of a great castle and his company leave for a quest in the bright light of an early spring morning. They later return injured and defeated in the muted light of a late autumn afternoon.

Dive deeper

In the mid-19th century, pure landscape pictures were traditionally ranked lower than other subject matter, such as themes from history, mythology, literature, or religion. Thomas Cole sought to create what he called a “higher style of landscape” that blended narrative elements into carefully executed scenes from nature. His use of two canvases allowed him to build his narrative to even greater technical and emotional heights. The Departure introduces a troop of knights embarking on a heroic crusade in the early summer led by their lord on his valiant white horse. In The Return, a smaller group—weary and defeated—trudges home in the autumn dusk; they carry the dying lord, his riderless horse trailing behind.

The two landscapes were commissioned as a pair by wealthy landowner William Paterson Van Rensselaer in December 1836, specifying only that the paintings should depict morning and evening. Cole had recently enjoyed critical and popular success for his epic five-canvas series, The Course of Empire (1836, The New-York Historical Society) completed earlier in the year, which likely made Van Rensselaer choose him for the project. That Cole achieved his goal of a “higher style of landscape” among his contemporaries is reflected in the praise the paintings received in an 1837 New-York Mirror review:

These pictures represent Morning and Evening, or Sunrise and Sunset; and are, merely from that point of view, invaluable. They contrast the glowing warmth of one, with the cool tints and broad shadows of the other; and to do this is the work of a master, who has studied nature and loves her….Not only this is done, but a story is told by the poet-painter, elucidating at once, the times of chivalry and feudal barbarism, and the feelings with which man rushes forth in the morning of day and of life, and the slow and funereal movements which attend the setting of his sun.

Object Data

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 100.3 × 161.6 cm (39 1/2 × 63 5/8 in.)

framed: 133.4 × 194.6 × 15.9 cm (52 1/2 × 76 5/8 × 6 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (Gift of William Wilson Corcoran)

Accession Number

2014.79.13

Artists / Makers

Thomas Cole (painter) American, 1801 - 1848

Image Use

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Detail Information

Inscription

lower center right: TC / 1[8]37

Provenance

Commissioned by William P. Van Rensselaer, Esq., Albany. Purchased by 1853 by William Wilson Corcoran [1798-1888], Washington; gift 10 May 1869 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran, William Wilson

Exhibition History

1838: Thirteenth Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, 1838, no. 65.

1848: Exhibition of the Paintings of the Late Thomas Cole, American Art Union, New York, 1848, no. 56.

1949: De Gustibus: An Exhibition of American Paintings Illustrating a Century of Taste and Criticism, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949, no. 3.

1959: Loan Exhibition. Masterpieces of the Corcoran Gallery of Art: A Benefit Exhibition in Honor of the Gallery's Centenary, Wildenstein, New York, 1959, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1971: The Romantic Vision in America, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1971, no. 9.

1972: Art and the Excited Spirit, America in the Romantic Period, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, 1972, no. 38.

1976: Corcoran [The American Genius]. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1976, unnumbered catalogue.

1987: American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1987-1988, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

1993: The Century Club Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1993, unpublished checklist.

1994: Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, National Museum of American Art, Washington; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; New-York Historical Society, New York, 1994-1995, unnumbered catalogue.

2005: Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, 2005-2007, checklist no.15.

2008: The American Evolution: A History through Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2008, unpublished checklist.

2009: American Paintings from the Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 6 June-18 October 2009, unpublished checklist.

2013: American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013-28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

1857: Lanman, Charles. Catalogue of W.W. Corcoran's Gallery. Washington, 1857: 6, no. 3.

1882: Macleod, William. Catalogue of the Paintings, Statuary, Casts, Bronzes, &c. of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, 1882: 42, no. 2.

1887: Macleod, William. Catalogue of the Paintings, Statuary, Casts, Bronzes, &c. of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, 1887: 43, no. 2.

1947: Corcoran Gallery of Art. Handbook of the American Paintings in the Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, 1947: 27.

1959: Corcoran Gallery of Art. Masterpieces of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, 1959: 48, repro.

2011: Kelly, Franklin. "Thomas Cole, The Departure, The Return." In Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Edited by Sarah Cash. Washington, 2011: 20, 78-81, 258, repro.