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The Titan's Goblet

Thomas Cole American
1833
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 733
The culmination of Cole's romantic fantasies, this work echoes the artist's other works of the period in its Italian derived scenery and its attempt to illustrate themes dealing with the grandeur of the past, the passage of time, and the encroachment of nature. Rejected by Cole's patron, Luman Reed, and subsequently owned by the artist John M. Falconer, the work defies full explanation. The massive, vegetation encrusted goblet around whose rim are found classical ruins, and on whose glassy surface boats sail, has been linked to Norse legend and Greek mythology. Theophilus Stringfellow, Jr. described it as a self-contained, microcosmic human world in the midst of vast nature, while Falconer linked the monumental stem of the goblet to the trunk of the Norse world-tree; he likened the cup to "the ramifying branches . . . which spread out and hold between them an ocean dotted with sails, surrounded by dense forests and plains." Other theories tie the fantastic forms to J. M. W. Turner's "Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus" (National Gallery, London), to Italian architecture and geological formations, or to the golden goblet of the sun-god Helios. The elevation and remove of the cup, rimmed with classical remnants, suggests the disassociation of the present, embodied in the surrounding landscape, from the pinnacle of creation which nourished its culture. Cole serves as intermediary, a role open only to the artist or poet, transcending the strictues of the immediate world to unite past and present.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The Titan's Goblet
  • Artist: Thomas Cole (American, Lancashire 1801–1848 Catskill, New York)
  • Date: 1833
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 19 3/8 x 16 1/8 in. (49.2 x 41 cm)
  • Credit Line: Gift of Samuel P. Avery Jr., 1904
  • Object Number: 04.29.2
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

More Artwork

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Titan's Goblet at the Approach of the Third Millennium, Stephen Hannock American, Polished oil and alkyd over acrylic on illustration board in artist frame
Titan's Goblet at the Approach of the Third Millennium
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1995
Wilderness Landscape Study
Thomas Cole
ca. 1828–41
Shipwreck, Thomas Cole American, Graphite on off-white wove paper, American
Shipwreck
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Landscape with Tower (from McGuire Scrapbook), Thomas Cole American, Graphite on off-white wove paper, American
Landscape with Tower (from McGuire Scrapbook)
Thomas Cole
The Mountain Ford, Thomas Cole American, Oil on canvas, American
The Mountain Ford
Thomas Cole
1846

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