Frederic Edwin Church
American, 1826 - 1900
Death-PlaceNew York, NY
Birth-PlaceHartford, CT
BiographyFrederic Church was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the only son of a wealthy businessman. Although his father hoped he would become a physician or enter the world of business, Church persisted in his early desire to be a painter. In 1842 and 1843 he studied in Hartford with Alexander H. Emmons, a local landscape painter, and Benjamin H. Coe, a well-known drawing instructor. In 1844 Church's father, resigned to his son's choice of a career, arranged through his friend the art patron Daniel Wadsworth two years of study with Thomas Cole. Church thus became the first pupil accepted by America's leading landscape painter, a distinction that immediately gave him an advantage over other aspiring artists of his generation. Church showed a remarkable talent for drawing and a strong inclination to paint in a crisp, tightly focused style. In 1845 he made his debut at the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design, where he would continue to show throughout his career. Two years later, four of his paintings were shown at the American Art-Union, and by that point he was established in New York as one of the promising younger painters. In 1849, at the age of twenty-three, Church was elected to full membership in the National Academy, the youngest person ever so honored. During the late 1840s and early 1850s Church experimented with a variety of subjects, from recognizable views of American scenery ("West Rock, New Haven" [1849; NBMAA]) to highly charged scenes of natural drama ("Above the Clouds at Sunrise" [1849; Gulf States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa), to imaginary creations based on biblical and literary sources for which he was much indebted to Cole ("The Deluge" [1851; whereabouts unknown]). Gradually, however, he began to specialize in ambitious works that combined carefully studied details from nature in idealized compositions that had a grandeur and seriousness beyond the usual efforts of his contemporaries.
Church traveled widely in search of subjects, first throughout the northern United States and then, in 1853, to South America. His first full-scale masterpiece, "The Andes of Ecuador" (1855; Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, N.C.), is a four-by-six-foot canvas depicting a vast tropical mountain panorama that astounded viewers with its combination of precise foreground detail and sweeping space. Two years later Church's reputation as America's most prominent landscape painter was secured with the exhibition in New York, London, and other cities of "Niagara" (1857; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). A second trip to South America that year resulted in his most famous painting of the tropics, "Heart of the Andes" (1859; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
During the 1860s Church was at the height of his powers and created a remarkable series of large landscapes, including "Twilight in the Wilderness" (1860; Cleveland Museum of Art), "The Icebergs" (1861; Dallas Museum of Art), "Cotopaxi" (1862; Detroit Institute of Arts), "The Aurora Borealis" (1865; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.), and "Rainy Season in the Tropics" (1866; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco). He continued to travel, and important works resulted from a trip to Jamaica in 1865 and a visit to Europe and the Near East in 1867-68. By the early 1870s, however, his reputation was in decline, with American critics and patrons increasingly faulting his detailed and grand style as out of touch with the times. Church devoted more time and energy to his family and to the construction and furnishing of Olana, his palatial home on a hill overlooking the Hudson. After 1880 he painted relatively few important works, though he continued to produce wonderfully fresh oil sketches of the view from Olana in changing conditions of light and weather. When he died in 1900, he was largely forgotten, and interest in his work revived only in the 1960s. He is now generally considered one of the most important proponents of landscape painting in mid-nineteenth-century America.
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