About

Cole created The Architect's Dream for prominent New York architect Ithiel Town, who commissioned a landscape from the artist in 1839. Town paid Cole in cash and books from his extensive architectural library, which inspired the painting's fantastic composition. Cole was, in his own words, "something of an architect," and provided the plans for the Ohio State Capitol, and also for St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Catskill after an earlier building burned down in 1839. Cole's friend William Cullen Bryant described The Architect's Dream as "an assemblage of structures, Egyptian, Gothic, Grecian, Moorish, such as might present itself to the imagination of one who had fallen asleep after reading a work on the different styles of architecture." ¹ Cole finished The Architect's Dreamin only five weeks, exhibiting it in the 1840 National Academy of Designannual exhibition, where it received mixed reviews. Some critics found it "too full of poetry," while others declared it "display[ed] as much genius as many of his best." Unfortunately, Cole's patron was on the opposing side, and ultimately refused to accept the painting because it was "exclusively Architectural." ²

• Sketch for Ohio State Capital Design
• Old St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Catskill, New York

Decode

Mouse over the detail to view its caption, click it to zoom in, and use the reset button on the lower right to zoom back out.

1. A man reclines on an oversized stack of folios, with a dreamy expression on his face and an architectural blueprint in his hand. This figure may represent the painting's commissioner, Ithiel Town, or may be a self-portrait of Cole, who considered himself an amateur architect.

2. The man rests on an oversized column, modeled after the Column of Trajan, a colossal sculpture in Rome erected in the second century C.E. Cole may have sketched the monument during his first trip to Italy in 1829-32. See Giovanni Battista Piranesi, View of the Trajan's Column.

3. A Romanesque arch frames the painting. This trompe l'oeil effect creates the impression that the viewer is looking out a window—complete with realistic-looking drapery—onto the scene.

4. The Gothic church seems to be a direct copy of an 1815 engraving of Salisbury Cathedral in London, found in one of Ithiel Town's books. Cole's patron was a leader of the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival movement in the United States. See After F. Mackenzie, Salisbury Cathedral Church.

5. Boats similar to those found in Cole's The Course of Empire: Consummation float in a harbor, referencing a past Golden Age.

6. Whereas the fountain included in Cole's The Course of Empire: Consummation was a comment on man's destructive power over nature, here it appears to be celebrating man's artistic genius.

7. A Greek temple front with a pediment and colonnade is similar to the classical buildings that Cole sketched on his two trips to Europe (1829-32 and 1841-42). Cole often modeled his own architectural designs after Grecian temples, in keeping with the enthusiasm for Greek Revival architecture in America during the early nineteenth century.

8. A temple with Egyptian lotus capitals provides a contrast to the Greek temple with Ionic columns, encouraging the viewer to contemplate the evolution of architectural history.

9. An Egyptian pyramid represents the birth of monumental architecture.

10. These Roman arches resemble those Cole painted on his first trip to Europe. See Aqueduct Near Rome.

Decode

Mouse over the detail to view its caption, click it to zoom in, and use the reset button on the lower right to zoom back out.

1. A man reclines on an oversized stack of folios, with a dreamy expression on his face and an architectural blueprint in his hand. This figure may represent the painting's commissioner, Ithiel Town, or may be a self-portrait of Cole, who considered himself an amateur architect.

2. The man rests on an oversized column, modeled after the Column of Trajan, a colossal sculpture in Rome erected in the second century C.E. Cole may have sketched the monument during his first trip to Italy in 1829-32. See Giovanni Battista Piranesi, View of the Trajan's Column.

3. A Romanesque arch frames the painting. This trompe l'oeil effect creates the impression that the viewer is looking out a window—complete with realistic-looking drapery—onto the scene.

4. The Gothic church seems to be a direct copy of an 1815 engraving of Salisbury Cathedral in London, found in one of Ithiel Town's books. Cole's patron was a leader of the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival movement in the United States. See After F. Mackenzie, Salisbury Cathedral Church.

5. Boats similar to those found in Cole's The Course of Empire: Consummation float in a harbor, referencing a past Golden Age.

6. Whereas the fountain included in Cole's The Course of Empire: Consummation was a comment on man's destructive power over nature, here it appears to be celebrating man's artistic genius.

7. A Greek temple front with a pediment and colonnade is similar to the classical buildings that Cole sketched on his two trips to Europe (1829-32 and 1841-42). Cole often modeled his own architectural designs after Grecian temples, in keeping with the enthusiasm for Greek Revival architecture in America during the early nineteenth century.

8. A temple with Egyptian lotus capitals provides a contrast to the Greek temple with Ionic columns, encouraging the viewer to contemplate the evolution of architectural history.

9. An Egyptian pyramid represents the birth of monumental architecture.

10. These Roman arches resemble those Cole painted on his first trip to Europe. See Aqueduct Near Rome.

Process

Cole's intense interest in architecture becomes quite evident in this pencil sketch of columns at the famous Monreale cathedral in Sicily. In a manner typical of his onsite sketches, Cole created a painstaking transcription of the columns' ornamentation and then noted their specific characteristics, such as the type of marble, beneath the drawing. Cole used such sketches to recreate European architecture as accurately as possible in his paintings. This particular sketch may have inspired the Romanesque arch that frames The Architect's Dream.

Works

1. Thomas Cole, Capitals at Monreale, graphite pencil on green gray wove paper, 1842, 14 5/8 x 10 3/8 in. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, William H. Murphy Fund, 39.415. View in Virtual Gallery

2. Thomas Cole, The Architect's Dream, oil on canvas, 1840, 53 x 84 1/16 in. Toledo Museum of Art. Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A Scott, 1949.162.

Words

For architecture to arrive at the perfection which we see in the best examples of Greece, Ages of expression and thought must have been necessary [for] the human mind [to] have traveled by slow degrees from the rude column of unknown stone such as formed the druidical structures through the stupendous portals of Egyptian Art to unsurpassed beauty of the Grecian Temple...Roman architecture is but depraved Greek. The forms are borrowed but the spirit was lost & it became more and more rude until it sank to the uncouth incongruities of what are called the dark ages...

[Gothic] Architecture aspires to something beyond finite perfection[.] It leaves the philosophic completion of Grecian Art when all is finished to the eye and touch and appeals to the imagination. Partaking of the Genius of Christianity it opens a world beyond the visible in which we dwell...All is lofty, aspiring and mysterious. Its towers and pinnacles climb toward the clouds like airy fabricks. Ever hovering on the verge of the impossible, on it the mind does not dwell with satisfied delight, but takes wing & soars into an imaginary world. The longings, the imaginings, the lofty aspirations of Christianity have found expression in stone. ¹

Find it here.