Roger I do agree with you. With Miguel's post it really makes the picture come alive.
I am so glad they stopped that practice of sacrifice. It is horrid to think of doing that to another person, or animal.

I know there is still sacrifices being done to this day, lets hope it is soon to an end forever.

"When Thomas Cole died in 1848, his reputation, both in the art world and among the general public, was enormous: probably higher than has been attained by any other American painter, before or since. Generally recognized as the founder of the "Hudson River School", the first really distinctively American movement in the visual arts, he had (largely by his own untutored efforts) virtually invented a new style of landscape, specializing in views of the wilderness which in those days could still be seen (though already requiring some effort to get around the touristy trappings) in the Northeastern States: especially in the valleys of the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers, and in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. At the same time, Cole (who was always working restlessly at improving his technique and diversifying his subjects) had also produced a large body of work more obviously derived from older European models: "Arcadian" pastorals in the tradition of Claude Lorrain; melodramatic renditions of Biblical and other literary themes, which owed a lot to John Martin; elegiac views of Antique ruins, mostly in Italy; and a handful of unclassifiable paintings which (at least to this untutored eye) look like uncanny anticipations of Surrealism. Yet more significant than all these, in the estimation of both Cole himself and most of his contemporaries, were those works generally described, for want of a better word, as allegories -- which Cole sometimes called "epico-historical", and which he always regarded as "the higher style of landscape". These were groups of pictures conceived and executed as consecutive series, illustrating in a clearly sequential narrative mode some moral, philosophical, religious or historical lesson. Pre-eminent among these sequences are The Course of Empire, The Voyage of Life, and The Cross and the World. These widely admired works were, Cole felt, his highest achievements, the strongest supports of his standing as an artist and a visionary..."
(From The Views and Visions of Thomas Cole by Carl Pfluger - http://azothgallery.com/ThomasCole.html)

Hi Miguel,

On these 2 last paintings, it looks to me like he painted one and then moved and painted the other one. The peaks on the mountain only look a little different, like from another angle The large stone (on the bottom painting) behind Indians looks like it could be an entrance to a cave, maybe they lived in there!
Nice that you put these two together.

Myrna,

We think alike here.

I was about to say to Miguel that these paintings are so good that it looks like Thomas Cole was carrying a camera. He catches the light on each occassion. He captures the mood. He captures the scene so accurately, yet there is that special something that is missing from a photograph, it's memory and invention and a little of the artists soul.

Wonderful.

Roger