Perspective
Thomas Cole and the Voyage of Life
By Charles E. Gessert, M.D., M.P.H.
Four paintings inspire exploration of our own thinking about life and death.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T.S. Eliot
I am one of the few pediatricians who regularly attends meetings of the American Geriatrics Society, but I have never found the idea that the elderly return to a childlike state particularly appealing. It does not fully capture the really interesting relationships between the beginning and the end of life. Although in some ways old age mirrors early childhood, it seems to me that that is only part of the story.
Pediatrics is all about normal development. Our patients pass from nearly complete dependency in early infancy to—in most cases—relative independence in early adulthood. They learn to crawl, walk, run, drive, and even earn a living, all in their proper time. In the second half of life, these normal stages of development occur once again, albeit in reverse order. At age 60, I can no long run as well, see as well, or even compute as quickly as I could in my 20s. If I am lucky enough to live long enough, I will experience other diminutions of my vigor, and, yes, of my independence. The gift that pediatrics can offer to geriatrics is the recognition and acceptance that aging is a normal stage of life.
Today, with the average person living into their 80s and many living beyond their 90th birthday, we often see the symmetry of the normal human life experience. In early infancy and in very old age, nature or biology seem to predominate. The newborn infant can exercise its will, but only within a narrow range. Gradually, the child’s ability to manipulate the environment grows, and for much of our adult lives we sense that we are masters of our own ships. In old age, once again, biological imperatives assert themselves, and the range of options subject to our will narrows. And, finally, with the approach of death, we face the ultimate lesson in humility.
Over the years, many authors and artists have stepped back from day-to-day experience to describe life in its entirety. In 1980, Erik Erikson outlined the major stages of psychosocial development from infancy through old age.1 The concepts have been made popular by authors such as Daniel J. Levinson and Gail Sheehy, who focused on the tasks and challenges of adult social development.2,3 These works have expanded and enriched our understanding of “normal” development through adult life. However, none of them has addressed the final stage of life directly. This omission bothers me, as I feel that it indicates that we do not really embrace old age and dying as part of life. As Erikson stated near the end of his own life, “lacking a culturally viable ideal of old age, our civilization does not really harbor a concept of the whole of life.”4
This has not always been the case. A series of paintings by the 19th century English painter Thomas Cole (1801-1848) embraces the entirety of life, even the decline that takes us to the grave.
I first encountered Cole’s Voyage of Life paintings in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., some 25 years ago and was immediately drawn to the pictures. They present an instructive overview of life, from the dependency of childhood to the transitory nature of ambition and independence, and finally to the inevitable reckoning with mortality. Over the years, I have returned to the National Gallery to visit the paintings; my appreciation of them has only increased with time.
I have also found the Voyage of Life paintings to be useful in my work with medical students and residents. Many young adults have little personal experience with aging and the approach of death, and find it difficult to envision how their views of aging and mortality are likely to change as they progress through their own voyage of life. Hence, I use the paintings to encourage reflection and stimulate discussion, particularly in regard to the preferences and priorities of the elderly—the age group that is likely to be least familiar to students and residents.
The Artist and the Paintings
Thomas Cole was born in England and moved to the United States with his family at the age of 18. He was still in his mid 20s when his paintings attracted the attention of leading painters of the day. By the time that he was commissioned to create the Voyage of Life series by banker and philanthropist Samuel Ward in 1839, he was an established and well-recognized painter.5
The first painting in the series, Childhood, introduces all of the elements of the voyage of life. The infant voyager floats peacefully, joyfully out of darkness into a lush and rich world. The river is calm, the vessel is guided by a guardian angel, and the hourglass on the prow of the boat is full. All is expectant, hopeful, and warm. The waters of the river ahead are opaque; obstacles—if any—are easy to overlook.
In the second painting, Youth, the voyager’s hand is now on the helm; the guardian angel is left behind as the voyager pursues his dreams. The hourglass is yet nearly full. The lush scenery of childhood gives way to a more open landscape, with broad vistas and more demanding terrain. Craggy mountains can be seen in the distance. The river at first leads straight toward the youth’s dreams, but then the course veers in the direction of a rocky and ominous canyon.
The third painting, Manhood, presents a much-altered scene. The dreams of youth have vanished, and the voyager prays fervently as he is carried, rudderless, into rough and perilous waters. The hourglass on the prow is now nearly empty. The entire scene is menacing, with dark skies, dark rocks, cataracts, and twisted trees that have been ravaged by mighty forces. Only the distant angel in the sky and the far-off sea suggest that salvation might yet be attained.
In the last painting, Old Age, the voyage of life is complete. The waters are calm; time has ceased to matter; the hourglass is gone. The voyager, now aged, is approached by his guardian angel, and more angels beckon from a distant, sunlit heaven. The dark, turbulent, and ominous landscape is now behind the old man, who appears to anticipate his departure from this earth with serenity. The series concludes with a promise of eternal salvation.
In these paintings, Cole reflects the assumption, common at the time, of an eternal landscape, in which the relationships between man, nature, and God are unchanging. Indeed, until the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, the landscape in which most people were born, lived, and died changed little during their lifetime. People were surrounded by a timeless natural environment, which put personal experience in an eternal context. In this light, it is not surprising that the conviction that salvation was to be found in the spiritual, the eternal—as captured in the Voyage of Life series—was held not only by Cole but also by the society in which he lived.
Cole is considered the progenitor of the Hudson River School of American landscape painters. These painters combined a view of nature as sacred with an unabashed celebration of the wonders of the opening American continent.6 In the Voyage of Life paintings, and in many of the Hudson River School paintings that followed, people and the works of humankind are dwarfed by the grandeur of natural scenes breathtaking in scope and beauty. When man’s presence or works are included, they are likely to be depicted as ephemeral, insignificant, essentially incidental to the natural landscape. Hudson River School paintings provide scant evidence of man’s impact on nature, and certainly no suggestion of his conquest of or dominion over nature.
By the 1880s, the works of Cole and the Hudson River School painters came to be viewed as romantic and old-fashioned. In no small part, this was due to the growing confidence in man’s ability to master nature; for better or worse, the awe of the natural world was waning. The perception of nature as wild and often uncontrollable was supplanted by a new view centered on people and on a comfortable and controllable, orderly progression through the stages of life. Such imagery aligned with Victorian—and modern—values, that virtue, hard work, and middle-class morality would be rewarded in this life by health, wealth, and longevity. Indeed, by the late 19th century, testimony to human mastery of nature was growing daily. Railroads, canals, dams, and cities were taming the natural landscape, while the mysteries of health and disease were beginning to yield to the application of scientific methods.
Nature and Medicine
Much has changed since Cole’s time. Today, our understanding of natural processes—and our ability to manipulate them—is astounding and growing every day. Still, our control of natural processes often has unintended and troublesome consequences. Antibiotics have given us powerful tools for fighting infection but, in turn, have engendered multiple-drug-resistant organisms. Our ability to slow the progress of chronic conditions that once were fatal has contributed to the growth of a large population of frail elders. Efforts to free people from the drudgery of winning their daily bread have succeeded in many parts of the world, with the production of surpluses in the market economies, only to be superseded by concerns about overpopulation and resource exhaustion. And now our abundance is ushering in new epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Today, some argue that we must devote as much energy to limiting and repairing our manipulation of nature as we do to controlling natural processes in the first place.
In our clinics and hospitals, we are now confronted with options—and dilemmas—that would have been unimaginable to the physicians of the early 1800s. In our intensive care units, in palliative medicine, and especially in hospice care, we must now decide when to stay our hand, when to allow nature to run its course, and how to care for patients and families when the approach of death has been accepted. In medicine, we are—like our society—seeking a balance between the control of natural forces and deference to them.
Of course, this is not to argue for a return to Cole’s time. Even if we ardently desired to go back to earlier, simpler times, we simply do not know the way. Still, it seems to me that it is worthwhile to reflect on what has been lost from our modern perspective and to dwell on what we may want to recapture or replace. Perhaps the most obvious of the things that have been lost is humility derived from an appreciation of the position of man (and medicine) in relation to the natural world.
When medical students are introduced to the Voyage of Life series, quite naturally they identify most strongly with the second painting, Youth, with its energy and ambition. However, when considering the series as a whole, they seem intrigued by the voyager’s acceptance of the approaching angel in the last painting. Perhaps this is because the approach of death, which it implies, is outside of their experience. To me, this angel symbolizes the forces that are outside of our control—natural forces, perhaps—that are most clearly dominant at the beginning and the end of our lives.
Of course, our basic relationship with nature has not changed since the time of Cole. Even though we often use terms such as conquest, dominance, and control when we talk about disease and death, we have not and will not abolish or evade natural laws. The paintings may be regarded as a reminder that ultimately we will have to learn to work with the natural world. MM
Charles Gessert is a senior research scientist at St. Mary’s/Duluth Clinic Health System.
References
1. Erikson EH. Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: W. W. Norton & Company; 1980.
2. Levinson DJ, Darrow CN, Klein EB, Levinson MH, McKee B. The Seasons of a Man’s Life. New York: Ballantine Books; 1978.
3. Sheehy G. Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. New York: Bantam Books; 1977.
4. Erikson JM. The Life Cycle Completed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company; 1997.
5. Noble LL. The Life and Works of Thomas Cole. Hensonville, NY: Black Dome Press Corp.; 1997.
6. Cooper JF. Knights of the Brush: The Hudson River School and the Moral Landscape. New York: Hudson Hills Press; 2000.