The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State

The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State: Introduction

A boy draws a stick figure, sheep graze, a farmer turns the soil and young people dance to a pipe. Thomas Cole's The Arcadian or Pastoral State makes the beginnings of civilisation look inviting. The second painting in The Course of Empire, it imagines a community whose work and pleasures still fit comfortably within its landscape. Painted around 1834, the oil on canvas belongs to New York Historical, where its accession number is 1858.2. ^[1]

Yet this peaceful valley contains more than a promise of happiness. An armed figure, fighting rams and a severed tree complicate the scene. Cole gives agriculture, learning and creativity ample room to flourish, while allowing the viewer to detect forces that may disturb their balance. The painting rewards attention to small actions: its history of society begins with bodies at work, tools in use and marks made on the ground.

At a Glance

• ArtistThomas Cole (1801–1848).
• Full titleThe Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State.
• DateAround 1834.
• MediumOil on canvas.
• Dimensions99.7 × 160.7 cm, unframed.
• CollectionNew York Historical; gift of the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts, 1858.2.
• Place in the seriesSecond of five paintings. ^[1]

Contents

1. Introduction
2. A landscape made habitable
3. Agriculture, animals and the work of living
4. Drawing, mathematics, music and dance
5. Buildings, belief and exchange
6. Small disturbances in the harmony
7. A desirable stage that cannot stand still

A landscape made habitable

The scene presents the same imaginary territory as The Savage State, after a long interval of human development. The mountain remains a recognisable landmark, but the settlement around the water has changed. Cultivated fields, domestic animals and a fishing village replace the earlier emphasis on hunting and rough shelter. Cole's description of the second stage, reproduced in the 2018 exhibition catalogue, explicitly places it after ages have passed. These are successive conditions of a society, rather than incidents in a single day's life. ^[3]

Morning light and the early summer setting give the change a gentle character. The landscape offers room for several different activities without appearing overwhelmed by any of them. Foreground figures occupy their own small areas; the village and boats carry attention into the distance; the mountain preserves a scale beyond the settlement. The relation between these levels matters. Human beings have altered their surroundings, yet the landscape remains large enough to hold them.

The title helps explain that ideal. Pastoral art concerns rural life, especially shepherds and their flocks, and often arranges it into an image of peaceful sufficiency. Arcadia evokes an imagined countryside of simple pleasures and relative freedom from urban ambition. In his catalogue entry, Tim Barringer compares Cole's scene with the rural world of Virgil's Eclogues. He also identifies the deep greens, distant blues and measured relationship between nature and human construction with the example of Claude Lorrain. ^[3]

This is therefore an imaginative landscape, not a reconstruction of one historical community. The activities assemble a broad account of social beginnings, and the architecture draws on more than one cultural setting. The Stonehenge-like structure alone prevents a simple identification of the whole scene with ancient Greece. Cole's landscape brings familiar associations together so that the growth of a society can be understood at a glance, then examined in detail.

A small study for this composition also helps distinguish the inviting idea from its final painted form. The 2018 catalogue identifies a work in graphite and oil on paper mounted to canvas and describes its colour as brighter than that of the finished painting. Barringer relates the study's freshness to the example of John Constable. The comparison suggests that the pastoral scene's atmosphere was something Cole developed, rather than an inevitable consequence of its subject. In the finished canvas, the deeper greens and softer distance help the many activities settle into a coherent landscape. ^[3]

Annotated Details from The Arcadian or Pastoral State

Compare four details with the full composition, then open the photographs for a closer view.

Details from THE ARCADIAN OR PASTORAL STATE

Each crop comes from the same painting shown above.

1

The persistent mountain

The distinctive mountain rises behind the inhabited valley. Its repeated presence lets the viewer compare human change against a recognisable landmark. ^[1]

2

The small temple

A modest classical building stands beside the water, below the mountain. Architecture has entered the landscape while woods and open ground still occupy most of the view. ^[3]

3

The great foreground tree

The spreading tree shelters activity beneath it and frames the right side of the valley. Its scale gives the human gathering a place within the wider natural setting. ^[1]

4

A cultivated foreground

People, animals and worked ground divide the foreground into small areas of activity. The scene presents habitation through several ordinary tasks rather than one monumental event. ^[3]

Agriculture, animals and the work of living

The ploughman and his oxen make cultivation an active process. A field is not simply an attractive patch of colour: someone must prepare its soil. Nearby, the shepherd and flock show another way in which people obtain sustenance from the land. Together these occupations distinguish the second panel from the pursuit of wild animals in the first. Food depends on tending and repeated labour, rather than on the immediate outcome of a chase. Cole's own account singled out both shepherds and the ploughman when explaining the transformed scene. ^[3]

The animals also help establish the painting's scale of life. The flock is modest enough to remain part of the surrounding countryside. Domestication creates a relationship between people and animals that looks manageable within the larger setting. Fields have appeared, but wooded ground and distant heights survive. The resulting pleasure comes partly from the sense that cultivation has found a place without claiming every available surface.

Cole includes domestic manufacture among these activities through the figure of a woman spinning. This connects the field and flock with work closer to the household. A society needs clothes as well as food, and the image places such production alongside the more conspicuous beginnings of art and learning. Labour is dispersed through the scene rather than gathered around a monument to a ruler. Its practical achievements become visible through ordinary gestures. ^[4]

Barringer proposes that the spinner may also represent Clotho, the Fate who spins the thread of life. That identification is a possibility, not a certainty supplied by Cole. It adds a second level to the visible task: the making of thread might suggest the making of a society's destiny. Barringer develops this reading through the history of textile production and the larger consequences of industry. The painting remains intelligible without accepting the identification, however. A woman practising a useful craft already belongs naturally within its account of a working community. ^[4]

The distinction is useful throughout the picture. A small figure can contribute to the scene through the action we recognise, while also inviting a wider interpretation. We need not turn every tool into a fixed symbol to see that the pastoral state depends on work. Cole's ideal is inhabited and productive, with leisure emerging alongside cultivation rather than replacing it.

Drawing, mathematics, music and dance

One of the most revealing actions takes place close to the viewer. The boy on the footbridge scratches a comical human figure. The drawing is slight, especially beside Cole's elaborate painting, but it makes an ambitious claim: visual art begins with the desire to represent something. The owning museum reads this child as an indication of the birth of the visual arts, while Barringer describes the activity as painting in its infancy. ^{[1] [3]}

Cole places his initials directly below the boy. The proximity gives this otherwise tiny incident unusual personal weight. The accomplished painter associates his own identifying mark with a child's first attempt at depiction. Barringer suggests that this may imply an admission that Cole, too, still had much to learn. That modest interpretation suits the comic drawing, but remains the scholar's reading of the gesture. What is secure is the relationship between the boy's mark and the artist's initials. ^[3]

Elsewhere in the foreground, an older man draws a geometrical form on the ground. New York Historical interprets him as an emblem of the beginnings of mathematics; Barringer calls him a Pythagorean elder. The juxtaposition with the child is productive. Both use a simple surface to make an idea visible, yet one mark represents a body while the other concerns an abstract relationship. Cole lets representation and calculation develop within the same environment as farming and spinning. ^{[1] [4]}

To the right, young people dance with flower garlands to the music of a rural pipe-player. These figures show creativity becoming social. The boy draws alone, but music coordinates a group; dance makes that coordination visible in the movement of bodies. Barringer contrasts this gathering with the less ordered dance around the fire in the first panel. In the second, amusement has acquired a more graceful form within Cole's imagined sequence of development. ^[3]

The different activities resist a narrow definition of civilisation as wealth or military power. Drawing, mathematical thought, music and dance occupy the same scene as the work that sustains life. None requires the great palaces that will dominate the next painting. Looking across these figures reveals why the pastoral stage can seem so desirable: a community has begun to make, understand and enjoy things while retaining space for the natural world.

Watch: Thomas Cole

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Thomas Cole: Painting the American Landscape (remastered audio)

Thomas Cole National Historic Site

An introduction to Cole’s landscapes and artistic ambitions.

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▶01 · WatchPainting the American landscapeThomas Cole National Historic Site▶02 · WatchEden to EmpireThe National Gallery

Buildings, belief and exchange

The village beside the water extends this story beyond the foreground. Boats move across the inlet, and a large wooden vessel is being constructed on its banks. New York Historical also identifies rudimentary frame buildings under construction. The settlement is growing through practical structures and shared work. Its shore offers contact with a wider world, though the waterfront has not yet become an imperial city. ^{[1] [3]}

Shipbuilding carries particular weight because it joins craftsmanship with exchange. The unfinished craft shows the labour needed to create an instrument of travel and trade. Cole's description of the scene explicitly includes the beginnings of commerce. Goods and people can now move through the landscape by means that the community itself produces. Within this panel, the activity contributes to the promise of a more settled and capable society. ^[3]

On higher ground, a circular stone temple introduces another kind of collective activity. Its resemblance to Stonehenge is identified by both the owning museum and Barringer. Smoke rises from a fire within it, where small figures gather in a religious ceremony. The monument supplies evidence of architecture and organised worship, while its rough stones remain visually distinct from the elaborate buildings of the following stage. ^{[1] [3]}

It also makes the scene's invented character especially clear. Cole places a recognisably British prehistoric form within a landscape shaped by classical pastoral traditions. Barringer relates it to the interest in Britain's ancient past shared by Romantic writers and artists. In this reading, the temple serves as an imagined architectural beginning; viewers who know Stonehenge as a surviving ruin may also bring a sense of later decay to its apparently complete form here. ^[4]

The buildings do not yet monopolise the picture. The village belongs to the shore, while the sacred circle occupies its own position in the middle distance. We can recognise construction, exchange and belief without losing sight of the ground that supports them. The next panel will transform precisely that relationship, allowing architecture and ceremony to become much more dominant.

Small disturbances in the harmony

The armed man entering the foreground offers the clearest warning. His presence introduces military force into a community otherwise occupied with cultivation, craft and amusement. Barringer describes the costume cautiously as possibly Roman. The exact identification matters less than the contrast between this figure and his neighbours: weapons bring a different form of power into the pastoral scene. New York Historical also treats him as a sign of the society's future. ^{[4] [1]}

Two rams clashing behind the flock make aggression visible among the apparently placid domestic animals. The detail connects conflict with the life of the scene rather than introducing it only as a distant threat. In Barringer's catalogue reading, the rams and soldier together disturb the idyll. Their small scale allows the general impression of peace to survive, but closer attention changes the impression of complete innocence. ^[3]

The stump at the extreme right introduces a further cost. Trees can be removed to make room for cultivation and provide material for buildings or boats. Barringer interprets the severed tree as evidence that progress damages the natural environment. Beside the scene's productive occupations, it reminds us that the transformation of land involves loss as well as provision. The panel's balance is therefore an achievement with consequences, not a world untouched by human demands. ^[3]

Trade is similarly open to more than one reading. In the immediate scene, shipbuilding assists a small community. Across the whole cycle, Barringer argues, it also anticipates maritime imperialism. That interpretation gains force from the later paintings, where wealth and conquest accompany a much larger port. It should not erase the usefulness of the boats here. Cole makes the pastoral stage attractive enough for its possible loss to matter. ^[4]

His journal offers a helpful qualification to an absolute rejection of development. On 1 August 1836, describing railway construction near Catskill, Cole condemned unnecessary damage to woodland, yet allowed that works required for commerce could preserve natural beauty and sometimes make it more accessible. This later entry does not decode each detail of the pastoral panel, but it supports a distinction between useful activity and destructive excess. ^[5]

A desirable stage that cannot stand still

Cole's pastoral state is more than a pause before the spectacular city. It gives the series a measure against which later splendour can be judged. People already possess food, shelter, productive skills, learning and amusement. As New York Historical notes, an earlier conception called this stage simply civilisation and treated it as the height of human development. The modest settlement can therefore represent a positive ideal, even while the completed cycle carries it onwards. ^[1]

Early viewers recognised its appeal. Barringer records that the New-York Mirror, discussing the first two paintings on 6 December 1834, praised the rural happiness, cultivation and natural bounty of the second. Its response emphasised harmony rather than concentrating on the warnings. That historical reading is a useful reminder that the painting's peaceful character was persuasive in its own right. ^[3]

Comparison with The Consummation of Empire changes the weight of nearly every activity. Small boats anticipate a crowded harbour; simple construction precedes monumental architecture; modest communal pleasures give way to magnificent public display. The same mountain helps hold the comparison together. Its continuity makes the transformation of the inhabited landscape more apparent, while the stages of human achievement come and go beneath it. ^{[1] [4]}

Art historian Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque argues that Cole used landscape in this series to explore ideas as well as natural features. The pastoral panel shows how that ambition works at an intimate scale. Its historical argument is carried by a child drawing, a farmer working and people dancing, as much as by the buildings in the distance. Following those actions allows us to enjoy the scene's balance while recognising how much depends on its survival. ^[6]

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. New York Historical, The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State, collection record for 1858.2; object metadata, description and interpretive text.
2. Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser and Tim Barringer, Thomas Cole’s Journey: Atlantic Crossings (2018). Career context and artwork/study metadata: catalogue entries 10–66 and chronology, PDF pp. 137–231 and 249–262; related Barringer essay passages, PDF pp. 23–66.
3. Tim Barringer, catalogue entries 55–56, in Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser and Tim Barringer, Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), pp. 208–209, PDF pp. 212–213. Full catalogue.
4. Tim Barringer, “Thomas Cole's Atlantic Crossings”, in Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings (2018), p. 56, PDF p. 60; pastoral labour, Clotho hypothesis, Stonehenge, shipbuilding and military warning. Full catalogue.
5. Thomas Cole, journal entry, 1 August 1836, in the Thomas Cole National Historic Site's journal transcription, PDF pp. 23–24; railway construction, commerce and unnecessary woodland destruction.
6. Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, “The Exaltation of American Landscape Painting”, in American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987), p. 30, PDF p. 49. Full catalogue.
7. Franklin Kelly et al., American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I (National Gallery of Art, 1996). Cole catalogue and both Voyage of Life sets, PDF pp. 91–124.
8. National Gallery of Art, Study for The Mountain Ford (1846), accession 2015.19.772. Collection record and open-access image.
9. National Gallery of Art, Tree Trunks (1825–1840), accession 2015.19.607. Collection metadata and open-access image.
10. Splash image source.

    Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State, ca. 1834. Oil on canvas, 99.7 × 160.7 cm. New York Historical, gift of the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts (1858.2).