The Voyage of Life as Popular Art

Abstract

In its day, Thomas Cole's Voyage of Life (Figs. 1–4) enjoyed a popularity equaled by few works in the history of American art. In 1848, the series attracted perhaps as many as five hundred thousand people (then the equivalent of half the population of New York City) to the American Art-Union's memorial exhibition of Cole's work.1 Later in the same year, when the Art-Union selected Cole's series as a prize in its annual lottery, its membership almost doubled.2 Even after the series disappeared from public view, its popularity endured for another twenty or thirty years: between 1850 and 1875, as Howard Merritt has observed, printed editions of the Voyage of Life “were almost as often to be found in American homes as had been engravings of George Washington in an earlier generation.”3