The Vesper Hymn

On view in the American Art before 1900 galleries

Considered the founder of the landscape tradition in the United States, Thomas Cole extended the efforts of the European Romantics to explore spirituality in art with works like The Vesper Hymn. According to notes in his sketchbook, the painting showed a “view from Campi Flegrei,” or the Phlegraean Fields, a volcanic area near Naples, Italy. To “a mind capable of feeling,” Cole wrote, this scene of an ancient ruin would produce a “pleasing and poetic effect, a sentiment of tranquility and solitude.” As if to demonstrate how such emotional exaltation could be achieved, he populates the landscape with religious figures—a procession of monks emerging from a monastery tower and a kneeling woman praying by a shrine—who engage in solemn observance.