Destruction portrays the same location as Consummation, but here, in Cole's words, 'Luxury has weakened and debased. A savage enemy has entered the city.' Women are brutalised by invaders and one leaps to her death to avoid a soldier who grabs her cloak.

Destruction is Cole's finest essay in the apocalyptic sublime. It is influenced by John Martin and J M W Turner, from whom Cole derived the swirling vortex of cloud. Cole's prophetic vision of calamity may have had contemporary resonances: in December 1835, while Cole was working on the canvas, a fire swept through lower Manhattan, causing massive destruction in the Wall Street area.