European Sojourns

The Classical ruins that littered Rome with broken columns and crumbling walls fascinated Thomas Cole during his four-month stay in the Italian city in 1832. “I would select the Colosseum as the object that most affected me,” he wrote in his journal on May 14, 1832, “it looks like a work of nature not of man for the regularity of art is in great measure lost in ruin.” Cole noted the plants and flowers that covered the weathered stone arches and walls of the Coliseum, and which visibly displayed the regenerative and cyclical forces of nature.

The Roman ruins inspired Cole to paint his multi-canvas Course of Empire series (finished in 1836) and his Voyage of Life series (1839–1840), both of which illustrate the passage of time. Art historians have noted the sense of pensive melancholy captured in these works and Cole himself voiced similar thoughts upon viewing the Coliseum: “To enter within its ruined walls . . . gives to mind melancholy though delightful meditations.” Interior of the Colosseum, Rome remained with Cole throughout his life, undoubtedly serving as a souvenir of his time in Rome.

The abbey of Vallombrosa stands about nineteen miles southeast of Florence, Italy, on a wooded hill covered with beech and fir trees. During his first excursion to Europe Cole established a studio in Florence between May 1831 and October 1832. It was most likely during that time that he painted this small oil sketch of the abbey. Vallombrosa was a popular spot with tourists because of its picturesque beauty and its associations with the seventeenth-century English poet John Milton, who based his description of Paradise on the abbey: “In Vallombrosa, where th’Etrurian shades high over-arch’d embow’r.”

Cole painted Vallombrosa from below, looking up at the white monastery building through the dark green band of fir trees. His approach was similar to that described by fellow American traveler, Nathaniel Hazeltine Carter, who visited in 1826: “The approach to Vallombrosa bears but a faint resemblance to the gates of Paradise. A curtain of mountain fir forms the vestibule. The grove is artificial, which detracts much from its beauty. It is, however, thick, dark, and umbrageous, forming rather a pretty screen to hide the convent from the rest of the world.”

Sanford R. Gifford first traveled to Europe in 1855, spending time in London and also traveling and sketching throughout the English and Scottish countryside. Hampstead Heath, an ancient park that sits northwest of London, is marked by its sprawling and hilly terrain. It has been a popular destination for day excursions and for viewing the city of London from its elevated ridges. Gifford probably made this oil sketch of Hampstead Heath some time during 1855, since similar oil sketches on paper exist from that same stay in England.

In April 1870, George Inness traveled to Rome, Italy, where he remained for the next four years. It was his third trip to Europe, and this one was his most productive. Before leaving, he made arrangements with the Boston art dealers Williams and Everett to sell his paintings in exchange for regular monthly payments. The agreement funded Inness’s stay in Rome, but it also pressured him to paint landscapes that appealed to a broad commercial market. To make certain his paintings were salable, Inness paid close attention to detail and finish. As he said, “finish is what the picture-dealers cry for.” The painting did find a ready buyer in the Boston collector Thomas Wigglesworth, who lent it to the Boston Art Club for exhibition in 1873.

Olive Grove near Rome (The Alban Hills) depicts the Italian countryside as seen from the Alban Hills southeast of Rome. The area was popular with tourists because of its views, lakes, and refreshing air free from summertime malaria that plagued the marshlands around Rome. Because it pictures a popular tourist site, and because it had to be readily marketable to meet the agreement with Williams and Everett, Inness’s painting is similar to Italian vedute, popular painted or printed views of Roman ruins, civic and religious buildings, and tourist locales.

Inness was a second generation Hudson River School artist who changed his style repeatedly throughout his career. Most noticeable is the influence of the French Barbizon School that favored loose brush strokes and pastoral landscapes of quiet, solemn mood.

Ruins of ancient buildings captivated Europeans and Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time when European romanticism placed emphasis on individual emotions and feelings as the way to understand nature and contemplate the meaning of human existence. Ruins stood as powerful reminders of the passage of time and the process of decay; they embodied the natural cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth.

Thomas Cole’s painting of a ruined tower originated from his travels in Europe between 1829 and 1832. Soon after his arrival in England, Cole met with the highly regarded British landscape artist John Constable, who exhibited his painting, Hadleigh Castle. The Mouth of the Thames—Morning after a Stormy Night (1829), at the June exhibition of the Royal Academy. Cole’s painting practically mirrors Constable’s work. In addition to seeing ruins captured in paint, Cole viewed several actual ruins, both classical and medieval, during his travels to Italy in 1831 and 1832.

There is no evidence to suggest that Sarah Cole, the younger sister of artist Thomas Cole, ever traveled to Italy, yet her painting of Mount Aetna on the east coast of Sicily is a beautiful example of the American fascination for European views. Sarah is mostly remembered for painting copies of her brother’s work, and Thomas did paint several landscapes featuring Mount Aetna, but none of them match exactly the composition of Sarah’s piece. It could be that Sarah’s painting copies an unknown, and now lost, landscape by her brother. Sarah may also have altered Thomas’s views of Mount Aetna to create her own composition.