[CATALOGUE]
OF THE
GALLERY OF ART
NO.
SUBJECTS OF PAINTINGS.
ARTISTS.
1-5. The Course of Empire. Thomas Cole.
A series of five pictures, illustrating a nation's rise, progress, greatness, decline, and fall, and the consequent changes in the same landscape.
Note.—The isolated rock, crowning a precipitous hill, in the distance, identifies the scenes in each of the series; but the observer's position varies in the several pictures.
"First freedom, and then glory, when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption."
(Reed Collection.)
(New York Gallery of Fine Arts.)