As Americans and Europeans became more and more intrigued by the western lands of the United States, artists recognized the emerging opportunity to create a patronage for landscape painting. Leading the pack early on in defining the American image through its land was the English painter Thomas Cole who emigrated to the United States. Cole quickly realized the importance of the pristine and unspoiled western lands of the United States. The artist exclaimed: “We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out is our own ignorance and folly.” What wall do you suspect Cole is referencing here that “shuts us out”? Your thoughts?
Photograph of Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole, The Oxbow of the Connecticut River, 1836
Thomas Cole, Scene from The Last of the Mohicans, 1827
History of American Art 
I think that the wall that Cole reference is the beauty of Nature and how it is colonize in today society. It is sort of a shame that we narrow the resources that we use to have in Coles time. That we have to use other natural resources to get a better way of life and have nature able to grow back.
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I think that the “wall” Cole refers to is just like he said “Ignorance and folly.” To elaborate on the idea I think what makes a person ignorant in this sense is possibly the desire for more, or the desire for the imaginary. The people are foolish because they bypass the scenery that is present all around them in the form of America’s vast landscapes. The idea that they are “still in Eden,” but they disregard it, is what I think Cole refers to when he says “shuts out.”
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I believe Cole is referring to westward expansion, and consumerism when he refers to the wall that shuts us out. These two ideas can cloud one’s ideas about what beauty is. Beauty could be a new building, new cities, or motorized machinery. Therefore Cole is saying, that by getting caught up in these new ideas of beauty. People can then forget of the beauty, and deadly power of nature. It is one’s ignorance to these ideas that cause individuals to be “shut out” from what has always been around them. Since they have been too busy pursuing these new ideas to make note of it.
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I’d say that the wall that Cole is talking about is our ignorance like he said. Basically saying, the only one stopping us is ourselves. I think he could be saying that we should be pushing ourselves more and think outside of the box. Cole usually paints nature and I think that it’s one way to get past that wall.
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I believe that the wall Cole is talking about is the thought that we must “civilize” the world we live in. I think that western civilization has been bent on controlling the environment, and because of this destroy the natural lands. I feel cole saw this and felt that the westward expansion was destroying this eden which the natives had preserved for so long.
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I believe that the “wall that shuts us out” that Cole is referencing to is the ignorance of the people in terms of what surrounds them. Cole describes the wide and untouched western lands of the United States as Eden, a utopia or paradise of some kind. This venture further to the west allowed Cole a different perspective from what he had become accustomed to as natural landscapes began to be replaced and altered by the human species to accommodate their desire, completely forgetting the beauty and importance that resides in nature.
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I think the wall Cole is speaking about is expansion and Manifest Destiny. I believe he is saying that in our minds we often see land and feel that we have to take it and build on to it. We start to destroy the land while either not realizing, or simply ignoring that its Eden. Instead of preserving it, we tend to try to control it and change it, and because of that we shut ourselves out of something so beautiful and pure with little change of getting it back.
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Cole’s way of referring to “the wall” is our unawareness of seeing beauty in nature. By saying “We are still in Eden” refers to Cole’s appreciation for nature and its existence. Cole’s quote is reminder that “Eden” or nature in this case still exists all around us, just hidden from our consumed day to day lives. Landscape paintings like Cole emphasize the significance of nature and how it can be discovered by surpassing our disregard for our environment. Ultimately, nature reminds us to take a step back from modernism which consumes us every day.
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I think Cole was referring to the landscape of the states in his quote. He thinks that we are ignoring its beauty and take it for granted. People like Thomas Cole were able to recognize this beauty in the land and giver their best representation of that.
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In my opinion, the “Wall” that Cole refers is “our own ignorance and folly” which is same as what he said. We spent a lot of natural resources with our ignorance and folly and nowadays we live in messed nature.
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Like what most of the other posts have stated, I believe the wall that Cole was referring to was the desire for constant western expansion and manifest destiny. The idea that the environment in that moment wasn’t enough, and turning everything into a commodity, would be the ignorance and folly of our own making.
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I think the the “Wall” that Cole refers as “our own ignorance and folly” which is exactly what he said. The only thing that shuts us out is our mind, it just the matter we choose to see it or not. Nowadays people don’t care about the nature anymore because nature doesn’t fit into the society value now.
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