And Now a Few Words

"More familiar is Cole's Oxbow (The Connecticut River near Northampton), painted in 1836 and viewed from the top of Mount Holyoke.  Holyoke was one of the first of the mountaintops to be frequented by tourists; a hut to accommodate travelers was erected there as early as 1821.  As in the previous work, Cole organizes the main axis of the composition along a diagonal line of sight starting from the left foreground and culminating in the right middle ground.  Cole again deploys the left foreground in a repoussoir fashion, standing for the wilderness past with its desolate blasted trees, while beyond this darkened zone lies the sun-filled valley of the Connecticut River with its fertile meadow and terraced fields leading 'to one of the most sunny and cheerful villages in Massachusetts.'"

"Inevitably the seeds of destruction are present even at the moment of the empire's triumph.  The returning victor's subjugation of neighbouring states indicates an empire acquired through territorial aggression (in contrast, perhaps, to the expansion of the United States at least in part by treaties and by financial transactions such as the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, but prefiguring the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, which Cole abhorred) and liable to future rebellion."