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Desolation

Desolation is the fifth in a series of five oil-on-canvas paintings entitled The Course of Empire, created by the American artist Thomas Cole between 1833 and 1836. The series, now in the collection of the New-York Historical Society, depicts the growth and fall of an imaginary city, situated at the lower end of a river valley. In this painting, the remains of the city are depicted decades after its destruction by invaders, with the landscape beginning to return to wilderness.

Painting credit: Thomas Cole

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