Landscape, The Vesper Hymn: An Italian Twilight

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Landscape, The Vesper Hymn: An Italian Twilight

Artist Thomas Cole (American (born England), 1801-1848)

Date1841

DimensionsFrame: 41 1/8 × 53 1/4 × 2 1/8 in. (104.5 × 135.3 × 5.4 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1954.76

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 29

Label TextIn a timeless, romantic Italian landscape at sunset, a shepherd sings a hymn to a statue of the Madonna and Child. Thomas Cole pursued what he called “a higher style of landscape” that could express allegorical themes of morality and religion. Though better known for his vistas of the American wilderness, Cole, like many of his fellow American painters, spent time traveling in Europe and sketching the countryside there. Landscape, The Vesper Hymn was painted for wealthy New York merchant Thomas Hall Faile and was apparently loosely inspired by English romantic poet Felicia Heymans’ Spanish Evening Hymn. Subjects that combined romantic literature and romantic landscape were in demand by wealthy, well-educated Americans in the mid-1800s who wanted to express their cultured tastes.Published ReferencesCole Papers: Correspondence between Cole and Durand, Manuscripts and History Division, New York State Library, Albany (on microfilm, Archives of American Art).

"The Fine Arts, National Academy of Design," The Knickerbocker, XVIII, July 1841, p. 87.

Bryant, W. C., A Funeral Oration, Occasioned by the Death of Thomas Cole, Delivered Before the National Academy of Design, New York, May 4, 1848, pp. 26-27.

Cowdrey, M.B., National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826-1860, New York, 1943, I, p. 89.

Kennedy Galleries, Thomas Cole, N.A. (1801-1848) (exh. cat.), New York, 1964, pp. 13, 22.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, pp. 30, 35, pl. 24.

Exhibition Record of the National Academy of Design, 1826-1860, New York, 1943, vol. I, p. 89, 1842, no. 110.

Whitaker, Margaret C., "The Artist Looks at Nature," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 2, no. 2, 1959, p. 21.

Young, Mahonri Sharp, "From Howling Wilderness to Queensborough Bridge," Apollo, vol. 86, no. 70, Dec. 1967, p. 497.

Clarke, John R., "An Italian Landscape by Thomas Cole," Arts, vol. 54, no. 5, Jan. 1980, p. 118, p. 120, no. 8.

Exhibition HistoryNew York, National Academy of Design, 1841, no. 110.

New York, Exhibition of the Paintings of the late Thomas Cole at the Gallery of the American Art-Union, 1848, no. 5 (as Evening Vespers, with verse).

Grand Rapids, Michigan, Grand Rapids Art Gallery, Art Museum of the Month Program, 1961.

New York, IBM Gallery of Science and Art, American Paintings from the Toledo Museum of Art, 1986.