Thousands of people paid admission to see the painting. His famous painting Heart of the Andes, is a five foot high by ten foot wide (168 x 302 cm) canvas that was originally unveiled in a special room with dramatic gas jet lighting, curtains and palm fronds, to great response. He painted landscapes on a grand scale, both in terms of subject and in the monumental scale of some of his canvasses. (This was back before business and industry had really started in earnest their campaigns to rid both continents of those annoying patches of undeveloped wilderness.) Every spring to fall he would travel and sketch, often traveling by foot, and return to the studio in the winter to create his monumental works. He set out to convey the drama and grandeur of the North American and South American wilderness. Cole reportedly said that Church already had “the finest eye for drawing in the world” at the time, and Church is widely regarded as one of the finest American artists, perhaps the finest prior to Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer. ![]() Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonné of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site (New York and Cambridge, Eng.How about some church on a Sunday? Frederic Edwin Church, that is.Ĭhurch was the only student of Thomas Cole, who essentially started the Hudson River School of landscape painting, although whatever teaching transpired was probably more about what to paint than how to paint. Kelly et al., Frederic Edwin Church, (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989) ![]() Kelly, Frederic Church and the National Landscape (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988)įranklin W. Carr, The Early Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, 1845-1854 (Forth Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum, 1987)įranklin W. cat., (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, in association with the National Collection of Fine Arts, 1966)įranklin W. Huntington, The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church (New York: G. He spent nearly every winter in Mexico, returning in the summer to Maine, where he had first painted in 1850, and to Olana, where the sky and sunsets seen from his property inspired his late oil sketches.ĭavid C. From 1880 until his death in 1900 (his wife had died in 1899), Church created few major works. His extensive travels in the Middle East in 1868–1869 deeply influenced his taste for Persian aesthetics, which are reflected integrally in the design and decoration of Olana, completed on that hilltop in 1872. In 1867, he purchased a hilltop with magnificent views across the Hudson River toward Catskill, N.Y. A second trip to South America in 1857 resulted in the equally sensational Heart of the Andes, 1859 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), which was bought by a private collector for $10,000, the highest price then ever paid for a painting by a contemporary American artist.Ĭhurch married in 1860 and had six children. Niagara, 1857 (Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) catapulted Church to fame. The dramatic landscapes and waterfalls he encountered there and later painted spurred him to visit the United States’ own Niagara Falls in 1856. In 1853 Church traveled to South America. The following year, at the age of twenty-three, he became the youngest Academician in the organization’s history. ![]() Because of his accomplishments, Church was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1848. Contemporary audiences were particularly impressed by the geologically and topographically accurate details in Church’s depictions of American wilderness and agrarian life. His landscapes, often suffused with religious or historical significance, had broad appeal. To better position himself for professional success, Church moved to New York City in 1847. ![]() Church’s prodigious artistic talent developed rapidly during his two-year apprenticeship, as he created accomplished drawings and paintings of the Hudson River Valley and rural New England. Born into a wealthy and connected Hartford family, Church became the first and only student of the leading painter of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole (1801–1848) in 1844. Frederic Edwin Church was the preeminent landscape painter and most successful American artist of the mid-nineteenth century.
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