The Great Degeneration

Speaker: 
Niall Ferguson
Wed, 06/19/2013 - 6:30pm

EVENT DETAILS

Slowing growth, crushing debts, aging populations, anti-social behavior — what exactly is amiss with Western civilization? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, is that our institutions are degenerating and that to slow the degeneration of the West’s once dominant civilization will take heroic leadership and radical reform.

SPEAKER BIOS

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and the author of many books, including The Great Degeneration.

Making American Taste: Gallery Tour 2

Speaker: 
Linda S. Ferber
Mon, 12/19/2011 - 11:00am

Event details

In the nineteenth century, the place of the arts in a democracy was a hotly debated topic in the United States. The new exhibition Making American Taste: Narrative Art for a New Democracy integrates the broad range of styles and narrative themes — from history, literary and religious subjects to the more familiar rural and domestic genres — through which Americans were expected to attain cultural refinement. Join Senior Art Historian Linda S.

Making American Taste: Gallery Tour 1

Speaker: 
Linda S. Ferber
Mon, 11/28/2011 - 11:00am

Event details

In the 19th century, the place of the arts in a democracy was a hotly debated topic in the United States. The new exhibition Making American Taste: Narrative Art for a New Democracy integrates the broad range of styles and narrative themes — from history, literary and religious subjects to the more familiar rural and domestic genres — through which Americans were expected to attain cultural refinement. Join Senior Art Historian Linda S.

The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire

Title
The Course of Empire: The Consummation of Empire
Date 
1836
Related People 
Artist/Maker: Thomas Cole
Medium 
Oil on canvas (relined)
Dimensions 
Overall: 51 1/4 x 76 in. ( 130.2 x 193 cm ) Frame: 65 x 89 1/4 x 5 3/4 in. ( 165.1 x 226.7 x 14.6 cm )
Credit Line 
Gift of The New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts
Object Number 
1858.3
Marks 
signed, dated mid right: 'T. Cole / 1836'
Gallery Label 
In the late 1820s the young Thomas Cole quickly built a successful career as a painter of Hudson River landscapes, but he harbored ambitions of turning the landscape form to a larger purpose. As early as 1827 he conceived a cycle of paintings that would illustrate the rise and fall of a civilization, and a few years later he began sketching and developing his ideas. The artist attempted unsuccessfully to persuade Robert Gilmor, a Baltimore patron, to commission the series, and in 1833 he secured a commission from New York merchant Luman Reed to paint a cycle of five paintings for the art gallery in his home. In the resulting series, The Course of Empire, Cole presented a cyclical view of history in which a civilization appears, matures, and collapses. The artist's distinctly pessimistic vision differed from that of many of his peers; in the early years of the United States' history, its future was considered limitless. Cole drew from a number of literary sources, such as Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Byron's epic Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. The motto he attached to the series was taken from Byron's popular poem: "First freedom, then glory; when that fails, wealth, vice, corruption." The artist finally settled on a title in 1835, taken from Bishop George Berkeley's 1729 poem, "Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America," which begins "Westward the Course of Empire takes its way." Cole also drew upon paintings he had seen on his recent trip to Europe (1829-32), including the work of J.M.W. Turner and Claude Lorrain. The five paintings follow a dramatic narrative arc, anchored by the imperturbable mountain in the background, and expounded with rich and complex symbolic systems that illustrate this imaginary world's history, including the course of the sun across the sky, the changing relation of man to nature, the role of animals, the arts, and the military, and even the placement and character of his own signature. Luman Reed, Cole's generous patron, did not live to see the completion of the series. He died in June of 1836, but Reed's family encouraged Cole to complete the work. The series was exhibited to great acclaim in New York later that year. The Course of Empire, along with the rest of Reed's collection, became the core of the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts. That group of works was donated to the New-York Historical Society in 1858, forming the foundation of its acclaimed collection of American landscape painting. Cole intended this third painting as the visual climax of the series, choosing a slightly larger canvas and taking considerable time and pains with the composition. He planned to depict "a great city girding the bay
Provenance 
Luman Reed, d. 1836; Mrs. Luman Reed, New York, 1836-44; New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts, 1844-58.
Bibliography 
Morris, G. P., ed., "The Fine Arts," The New-York Mirror, A Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts, Vol. XII, No. 23, December 6, 1834, p. 179. Morris, G. P., ed., "The Fine Arts," The New-York Mirror, A Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts, Vol. XIII, April 2, 1836, p. 318. Morris, G. P., ed., "The Fine Arts," The New-York Mirror, A Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts, Vol. XIV, No. 17, October 22, 1836, p. 135. Morris, G. P., ed., "The Fine Arts," The New-York Mirror, A Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts, Vol. XIV, No. 18, October 29, 1836, p. 142. Clark, Lewis Gaylord, ed. The Knickerbocker, Vol. VIII, No. 5, November, 1836, pp. 81, 630. Morris, G. P., ed., "The Fine Arts," The New-York Mirror, A Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts, Vol. XIV, No. 19, November 4, 1836, p. 150. "Amusements," New York Commercial Advertiser, Vol. XXXIX, Friday, November 4, 1836, n.p. Morris, G. P., ed., "The Fine Arts," The New-York Mirror, A Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts, Vol. XIV, No. 20, November 12, 1836, p. 158. Morris, G. P., ed., "The Fine Arts," The New-York Mirror, A Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts, Vol. XIV, No. 27, December 31, 1836, p. 215. Poe, Edgar Allen, ed., "The New York Gallery of the Fine Arts," The Broadway Journal, I, February 15,1845, pp. 102-103. Bryant, William Cullen, Funeral Oration, occasioned by the Death of Thomas Cole, Delivered Before the National Academy of Design, New-York, May 4, 1848, New York, D. Appleton & Company, pp. 23-4, 26. Exhibition of the Paintings of the late Thomas Cole, at the Gallery of the American Art-Union, 1848, pp. 19-20. Noble, Louis Legrand, The Course of Empire, Voyage of life, and Other Pictures of Thomas Cole, N. A., With Selections from his Letters and Miscellaneous Writings: Illustrative of his Life, Character, and Genius, New York: Cornish, Lamport & Company, 1853, n.p. Stillman, W. J. & Durand, J. Eds., "The Artists of America," The Crayon, Vol. VII, No. 2, February 1860, pp. 45-6. Hone, Philip, The Diary of Philip Hone 1828-1851, New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1889, p. 236. Durand, John, The Life and Times of Asher B. Durand, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894; Reprint, Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press, 2007), p. 124. Caffin, Charles H., The Story of American Painting: The Evolution of Painting in America from Colonial Times to the Present, New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1907, pp. 66, 69-70. Mather, Frank Jewett, Morey, Charles Rufus, and Henderson, William James, The Pageant of America: The American Spirit in Art, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927, p. 43. Isham, Samuel, The History of American Painting, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1936, pp. 225-6. Sweet, Frederick A. "Asher B. Durand, Pioneer, American Landscape Painter," The Art Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring, 1945, pp. 141, 153. Howe, Winifred E., A History of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a Chapter on the Early Institutions of Art in New York. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1946, pp. 62-7 Thomas Cole: One Hundred Years Later, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT 1948, pp. 10-1. Tunnard, Christopher, "Reflections on the Course of Empire and other Architectural Fantasies of Thomas Cole, N.A.," The Architectural Review, Vol. 104, December 1948, pp. 291-294. Davidson, Marshall, "Whither the Course of Empire?" American Heritage, October 1957, pp. 52-5, 58-61, 104. Flexner, James Thomas, That Wilder Image: The Painting of America's Native School from Thomas Cole to Winslow Homer, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962, pp. 49-58, 108, 354. McCoubrey, John, American Tradition in Painting, New York: G. Braziller, 1963, p. 65. Exhibition at Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1964, pp. 14, 26-7. Noble, Louis Legrand, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, Hensonville, New York: Black Dome Press, 1964, pp. 103, 112, 129-131, 149-50, 155, 157-9, 164-74, 264, 268, 287. Walla
Due to ongoing research, information about this object is subject to change.

Thomas Cole's First Studio, Catskill, NY

Title
Thomas Cole's First Studio, Catskill, NY
Date 
1881
Related People 
Artist/Maker: John Mackie Falconer
Medium 
Oil on academy board
Dimensions 
Overall: 8 x 12 in. ( 20.3 x 30.5 cm )frame: 10 1/2 x 14 1/2 x 1 in. (26.7 x 36.8 x 2.5 cm)
Credit Line 
Gift of an Anonymous Donor
Object Number 
1947.421
Due to ongoing research, information about this object is subject to change.

The Luman Reed Gallery: A History Of Art Collecting In 19th-Century New York

Mar 1 2005 - Apr 30 2005

After a two-year hiatus, the art collection formed by Luman Reed, one of New York's pioneering 19th-century collectors, reclaimed its pride of place in the picture galleries on the second floor, just off Dexter Hall from March 2004 through April 2005. Thomas Cole's "The Course of Empire" and other works by the founder of the Hudson River School took center stage, along side seminal paintings by Asher Brown Durand, William Sidney Mount and George Whiting Flagg. Luman Reed's collection occupies a special place in the development of American art; in the history of taste, collecting, and patronage; as well as in the history of New York and the New-York Historical Society. The donation of the collection in 1858, together with the holdings of The New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts, transformed the Historical Society into New York City's premiere art museum in an era before the establishment of such museum giants as the Metropolitan and the Whitney. In addition to featuring Reed's collection, the exhibition also explored the history of New York art collecting in the nineteenth century, highlighting other important art patrons, including Thomas Jefferson Bryan and Robert L. Stuart, whose collections augment the painting holdings of the Historical Society.

Making American Taste: Narrative Art for a New Democracy

Nov 11 2011 - Sep 9 2012

Making American Taste features fifty-five works from the New-York Historical Society’s collection that cast new light on both the history of American art and the formation of American cultural ideals during a crucial period from the 1830s to the late 1860s. By integrating history, literary and religious subjects with now better-known examples of rural and domestic genre, the exhibition explores the broad range of styles and narrative themes that appealed to nineteenth-century Americans seeking cultural refinement.

Click on the painting below to learn about the people depicted.

Louis Lang (1814–1893), Return of the 69th (Irish) Regiment, N.Y.S.M. from the Seat of War, 1862-1863. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of Louis Lang, 1886.3. Photo courtesy Williamstown Art Conservation Center, 2011

The exhibition includes Louis Lang’s The Return of the 69th (Irish) Regiment, N.Y.S.M. from the Seat of War, a Civil War masterpiece rediscovered, as well as works by such canonical artists as Benjamin West, Asher B.

Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School

Sep 21 2012 - Feb 20 2013

Please note the closing date has been changed from February 21
After a national tour, the forty-five iconic works, including Thomas Cole’s five-part series The Course of Empire and other masterworks by Cole, John F. Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, Jasper F. Cropsey, Asher B. Durand and others will once again be on display at the New-York Historical Society. This exhibition showcases the extraordinary depth and richness of the New-York Historical Society’s landscape collections, especially paintings by artists of the Hudson River School. Rising to eminence in New York during the mid-nineteenth century, this loosely knit group of artists, together with like-minded poets and writers, forged a self-consciously “American” landscape vision and literary voice. Both were grounded in the exploration of the natural world as a resource for spiritual renewal and as an expression of cultural and national identity. 

Thomas Cole (1801–1848), Catskill Creek, NY, 1845. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, The Robert L. Stuart Collection, S-157

The Hudson River and the natural wonders along its banks had a long history of associations with earlier inhabitants, including Native Americans, the Dutch, and the British. Key battles of the American Revolution were fought along the river’s course. Such historical associations amid the evocative terrain of the Catskills, Adirondacks, and White Mountains enriched regional sites throughout the Hudson River Valley and New England, inspiring homegrown schools of painting and literature grounded in their scenery and history.

Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School

Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School features forty-five iconic works including Thomas Cole’s five-part series: The Course of Empire and other masterworks by Cole, John F. Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, Jasper F. Cropsey, Asher B. Durand and many others.

Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) , Study of an Orchid, 1872. Oil on canvas. The New-York Historical Society, The Robert L. Stuart Collection, S-112

Tour Schedule

Venue Dates
Amon Carter Museum (Fort Worth, TX) February 26–May 29, 2011
Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA) July 30–November 6, 2011
Columbia Museum (Colum

Paintings >

Teaser: 

The New-York Historical Society houses an outstanding collection of over twenty-five hundred American paintings—primarily portraits, genre scenes and landscapes—dating from the colonial period through the twentieth century, as well as a select number of European works. It includes the personal collection of the New York merchant and pioneering art patron Luman Reed, as well as the collection of Robert L. Stuart, another nineteenth-century New York philanthropist and art collector.

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