Thomas Cole · 1842
The Voyage of Life: Old Age
Posters from $15.00 CAD · Canvas from $39.00 CAD
Ships across Canada
A white-bearded man in a golden boat drifts onto still water as his angel points to a shaft of light breaking through a bank of clouds. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Up to 17.8 × 12 in · landscape
Size
Larger sizes are unavailable for this painting because the source scan's resolution wouldn't print at gallery quality.
Format & finish
Archival cotton canvas stretched over a wooden frame. Ready to hang as-is. No external frame.
Scale next to a 5'10" person
+ tax at checkout
Materials & quality
›Canvas & inks
Giclée-printed on archival cotton canvas with fade-resistant pigment inks, hand-stretched over wooden bars. Gallery-wrapped — ready to hang with no extra frame needed.
›Floater frame
Hand-finished solid wood floater frame in five finishes. The canvas sits inside with a clean shadow gap — the way galleries hang contemporary canvas.
›Posters
Premium archival paper — 200 gsm soft matte or 230 gsm vibrant glossy. Ships flat or rolled, ready for your own frame.
›Faithful to the source
Printed from the highest-resolution museum and archive scans available. Each painting's maximum size is capped at what its source scan can support at gallery quality.
The story of The Voyage of Life: Old Age
Cole painted the first Voyage of Life series in 1840 and reproduced it with minor alterations in 1842; the 1842 set is in the National Gallery of Art. In each of the four paintings the voyager rides the River of Life with a guardian angel, and the boat's direction of travel reverses from one picture to the next.
Adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an Anglo-American artist who founded the Hudson River School art movement. He painted romantic landscapes and history paintings. Influenced by European painters, but with a strong American sensibility, he was prolific throughout his career and worked primarily with oil on canvas. His paintings are typically allegoric and often depict small figures or structures set against moody and evocative natural landscapes. They are usually escapist, framing the New World as a natural eden contrasting with the smog-filled cityscapes of Industrial Revolution-era Britain, in which he grew up. His works, often seen as conservative, criticize the contemporary trends of industrialism, urbanism, and westward expansion.
All Thomas Cole prints →Biography adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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