The Voyage of Life

I have always been interested in art. Not the kind of art where the artist lays a canvas on the ground and throws a bucket of paint on it before stepping on it a few times, or making some absurd squiggly(is this a word?) marks on it. The person is then suppose to interpret what it is,or find some meaning to it. I never see anything when I look at this type of art. I only see disorder and confusion and almost feel bad for the paint that was wasted. I guess that I am talking about the Jackson Pollock type of art that seems to be popular these days. Nothing against the people that enjoy this type of art. To each his own. Perhaps I am too ignorant to understand it. I do not know. I confess that I am wholly ignorant of the different periods or classifications of art, though I did take a college class, and did fairly well. That was years ago, and a lot of water has gone over the dam since then.  I enjoy looking at nice landscapes and pastoral scenes. There is a sort of tranquillity to them. About 20 years ago when I was a single man, my twin brother and I drove to the National Gallery of art in Washington D.C. It was here that I first became aware of the work of Thomas Cole.

     Thomas Cole was an English born artist who moved to the United States when he was a young man. He ended up in the Catskill mountains in New York where he painted some of his most famous work. His Voyage of Life was painted around 1842. It is a series of four allegorical paintings that represent the stages of human life. The four stages are childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. In each of the paintings an angel guides the person on a boat down a river. A majestic mountain scene is the background in each of the four paintings.

                                                                              Childhood

                                                                                Youth

                                                                                 Manhood

                                                                                    Old Age

     The painter does an excellent job at delineating the various stages. In Childhood an angel ascends from the darkness of a cave into a world of light. In Youth it is time for the child to be let go. Everything is bright. The youth has his whole life ahead of him, and is seemingly carefree as time is of no consequence to him. The angel stands on the shore and lets the youth go into this world of bliss to find his way, and also his eventual destiny. It is a happy time, but this is only temporal as the youth quickly finds out in the next scene. In Manhood the scene is dark, and the water is turbulent. The man prays for guidance in a world seemingly devoid of pleasure, but full of the travails and challenges that cross our path. Finally, in Old Age the man once again finds peace as the end is near, and the angel is there to guide him in his final days. It is in this final scene that the most provocative image is realized, at least to me. There is a beacon of light poking out through the clouds beckoning the old man. What is this? Is it hope? Or is it a final peace? Is this what our life is lived for? We come into this world in a state of innocence and soon find a specious world where confusion and turmoil mix with the occasional simple pleasure that we find at times. The process moves along with little regard to the life progressing along it's way. In time, all too soon, it ends, and all that is left in the life's wake is the history that it has left behind. Life is all too short, so we may as well make the most of it while we are here. I have passed the first two stages of life, and I guess that I am now about halfway through the third. I can relate to Thomas Cole's allegory of life. I guess most people can. I don't know. I bought a set of Cole's prints on this Washington D.C. trip many years ago. They have never been put in frames, and have been kept in either a drawer or a cardboard box for the past two decades. Every now and then I will stumble into them and stare at them before putting them away and continuing on my own journey down the river.