Landscape sketch showing an imagined scene of a metaphorical landscape. Divided between a lush and a barren landscape, this work may be a continuation of Thomas Cole's unfinished "The Cross and the World" series, which symbolically represents the spiritual and earthly paths through life. Here, two figures walk beside each other in the foreground at lower center right.
Beyond them, an immense, craggy, and dark mountain range in the middle distance divides the composition between an empty, barren, and cold landscape at left, and a lush, bright one at right. A luminous Christian cross hangs over the landscape at left, glowing above a misty blue expanse as if an apparition. In the foreground at left, at the opening of the barren, "spiritual" landscape, the bloody carcass of what is likely a deer stains the ground around it.
This rolling, foreground landscape appears covered in snow. Dark clouds hang above central mountain range and lead into the lush, mountainous landscape at right. A curious, glowing, yellow-green waterfall is framed by a group of three palm trees amid a dramatic and misty cliff-strewn landscape. The waterfall produces a river or stream that flows into the foreground at lower right before freezing. Meaning of this and similar works largely uncertain.
Verso: Sketch of a frame for a painting, whose upper and left sides are missing. The lower right corner fits into the lower right corner of the leaf. Rounded decorations loosely rendered along the lower portion.
