owner about a public exhibition. In 1841–42, when Cole was in Rome, he did a second set of the series which on his return to America in 1842 was successfully exhibited in several major cities and received further attention upon Cole's unexpected death in 1848. The first set is at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York, and the second set is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Works The four-part series is an allegory that traces a man's voyage along the "River of Life," portraying the innocence of childhood, the confidence and ambition of youth, the trials of manhood, and the approach of death in old age. Each painting places the voyager and his guardian angel in a different part of the river and surrounding wilderness. Art critics have ascribed a variety of potential inspirations to the work, the most obvious being the Bible's "river of life" imagery and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, along with a variety of 19th-century poems, essays, and sermons. Cole called the series an "Allegory of Human Life" and wrote detailed descriptions of the paintings, conveying how each depicts a different stage of the man's life and spiritual development. The voyager has also been seen as a personification of America, and the series as a warning against westward expansion and industrialization. The versions of 1842 are not exact replicas of the 1840 originals, but the alterations are generally minor. The most obvious difference is the brighter colors of the replicas, perhaps due simply to differences in available pigments. Childhood In the first painting, Childhood, all the important story elements of the series are introduced: the voyager, the angel, the river, and the expressive landscape. An infant is safely ensconced in a boat guided by an angel. The landscape is lush; everything is calm and basking in warm sunshine, reflecting the innocence and joy of childhood. The boat glides out of a dark, craggy cave which Cole himself described as "emblematic of our earthly origin, and the mysterious Past." The river is smooth and narrow, symbolizing the sheltered experience of childhood. The figurehead on the prow holds an hourglass representing time. In the first version of this work, Cole shows less landscape on the right side and thus does not include the river winding to the horizon. The perspective is also different: in the original, the boat is in the foreground,