Framed Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Thomas Cole

Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Thomas Cole is one of his most dramatic early biblical landscapes, blending moral narrative with the grandeur of nature. The canvas is divided into two contrasting realms: on the right, Eden glows with divine light, lush vegetation, and a waterfall suggesting purity and abundance; on the left, Adam and Eve are driven into a dark, barren wilderness, their bodies illuminated in anguish as an angel with a flaming sword hovers above. Cole uses light and shadow symbolically—the radiance of paradise versus the gloom of exile—to underscore the moral gravity of humanity’s fall. While rooted in the Romantic tradition, the painting also foreshadows Cole’s larger ambition to convey spiritual and moral lessons through landscape, a hallmark of the Hudson River School that he would later lead.