Thomas Cole's "The Voyage of Life"

Last weekend we made one of our 24-hour trips to St. Louis.  While we were there, we visited the St. Louis Art Museum, which is really great.  It's housed in one of the permanent buildings from the 1904 World's Fair and is free to visit.  Right now they have a special exhibit featuring all four original paintings from Thomas Cole's "The Voyage of Life" series.  (A second set hangs in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and we saw them last spring.)  The paintings are visually typical of the Hudson River School, and I like the allegory of man traveling the river of life.  This is the first, titled Childhood.  The Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Instituted in Utica, New York, owns all four pieces.