The Voyage of Life: Manhood 1840

Curator: Let's explore Thomas Cole’s 1840 work, “The Voyage of Life: Manhood,” rendered with oil paint. What strikes you about it? Editor: The roiling water and the looming darkness create such a feeling of dramatic tension, almost foreboding. The golden vessel seems so fragile against that overwhelming landscape. Curator: Indeed. The very material of the painting, the layered oils, lends itself to creating that turbulent atmosphere, almost as if the pigment itself embodies struggle. Note the brushstrokes used to build the tumultuous river. The application is anything but smooth and gentle. It is active and engaging and suggests both skill and deliberate handling to show inner emotional experiences of life and the exterior challenge of that emotion as the 'Man' sees it in reality. Editor: Absolutely, and that active struggle plays out on a symbolic level too. Look at the figure— he's standing tall, with a hand raised, but toward what? There's a sense of determination but also vulnerability, a call into the unknown perhaps. The 'angel' and its light feels farther off as it blends in with clouds. Curator: The luminosity is achieved through layering, thin glazes painstakingly applied over time. Cole, an immigrant himself, painted for an emerging American market and that this type of 'allegorical' theme resonated reveals much about the time's social landscape of moral expectation of being raised right. There are very detailed rocks in the distance showing 'obstacles', while we know from experience, the real labor required to keep this 'dreamy voyage' afloat often fell on laborers far removed from these kinds of paintings! Editor: True. Yet the image endures. The symbol of the river, the journey... they tap into universal themes of ambition and confrontation that linger across many cultures. Curator: An ambitious journey visualized, layer upon layer of oil and meaning for that very human spirit of survival against elements both material and internal. Editor: It makes you wonder where this tumultuous river will lead, what symbols await at the next bend, in this 'voyage of life'.