This is the last painting in Thomas Cole's "Course of the Empire" series.

As you view the series, you'll notice that the sun rises, then moves across the sky.  Finally, in this last painting, it has set and is replaced by a dim moon partially obscured by shreds of clouds and reflecting eerily off the water. 

Cole's belief in the purity of morning is apparent in the first two paintings which depict the loveliest, most harmonious scenes of all five paintings.  Cole was an artist of the Romantic movement, and, as a Romantic, he believed in primitivism, the idea that nature and primitive culture are superior to civilization.  It's no coincidence that his most pleasing images are in the morning hours. 

His least favorite time was evening, and that, too, is apparent.  The next to the last painting named "Destruction" occurs late in the day, and in the mournful "Desolation," the last of the series, evening has arrived.

Although the foreground scenery changes with each painting, you'll notice one feature that remains ever present in the background: a mountain.  Cole may be using it as an artistic device, a reminder that while man wreaks havoc on nature, the land, itself, endures. 

Cole chose something from Byron to describe the series of paintings (Byron, as I've mentioned before, was a leading figure in the Romantic movement).

There is the moral of all human tales
'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past
First Freedom, and then Glory: when that fails
Wealth, vice, corruption