The Return

Thomas Cole

National Gallery of Art

Honey-gold sunlight from low along the horizon to our left falls across the copper and bronze-colored canopies of trees that frame our view of a stone church with stained glass windows and ornate spires in this horizontal landscape painting. We look down onto the scene from a height, and from a distance. On a dirt path across the front of the picture, an armored man is carried on a red cloth-draped stretcher, which is supported over the shoulders of four men. The armored man has a black beard and hair, and his face is turned from us. The men carrying him wear togas in white, rose pink, slate blue, and mustard yellow. Three of them wear armored breastplates and helmets. A white horse draped with a gold, lattice-like blanket walks behind them. An empty saddle is strapped to its back, and the reigns rest around its neck behind the lowered head. A bit behind this grouping, to our left, another armored man holding a spear rides a brown horse, and, farther back along the path, a man holding a crooked staff and a woman stand near the base of a tall, narrow plinth. The plinth is backlit so ornate carving along the roof-like top creates a spiky silhouette. A sculpted person stands at the peak of the roof, a halo around the head. The area beyond the plinth is layered with trees and bushes extending into the distance, lit sage green by the setting sun. The path with the horses and men runs parallel to a ravine, so the grassy embankment closer to us is in deep shadow. At least two brown goats walk along in the shadows of the ravine near the white horse. Four more white goats, one with black spots, stand and lie near a tree that rises nearly the height of the painting along the right edge. The tree has rust-red leaves, and the trunk leans away from us, to our right. One massive branch has been shorn off, and the exposed wood is caramel brown against the darker, gnarled trunk. The church is beyond the path, to our right of center. Tall stained-glass windows, several stories high, are ablaze in red, orange, and topaz blue. Birds, painted with short strokes of black, flock around the church roofline. A procession led by a man wearing blue and red vestments and a tall, split cap emerges from the main, arched doorway. Another man wearing a brown robe stands near a sun dial between us and the procession coming from the church. The wide brim of that man’s hat is fastened at the front with a gold object. He lifts one hand and holds a long staff with a black knob at its center with his other. More people walk near the church, sit on a bench under a tree, and move through the landscape deep into the distance. All the people have light skin. Beyond the moss-green, grassy area around the path and church, a river winds under an arched bridge. A tan-colored building complex sits on a low hill to our left of center. Across the back of the scene, smokey purple and muted mauve-pink mountains line the horizon, which comes about halfway up the composition. The vivid yellow sun is low on the horizon to our left. A few light gray clouds skim across the sky, which deepens from pale yellow along the horizon to light blue along the top of the painting. The artist signed and dated the work on a stone near the man next to the sundial: “T. Cole 1837.” He also signed the front face of the tall pedestal to our left with the same text, though it is difficult to make out.