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Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Church was
the son of a wealthy businessman. Frederic
Edwin Church received his early art
training from local artists Benjamin
Hutchins Coe and Alexander Hamilton Emmons.
In 1844, with the help of the art patron
Daniel Wadsworth,
Frederic Edwin Church became the first pupil of the famous
Hudson River School painter
Thomas Cole.
While studying at Cole’s studio in Catskill,
New York, Church absorbed his teacher’s methods of sketching and
became a proponent of his epic style of painting. Upon
completing two years of training, Church
moved to New York, where he established a studio in the Art-Union
building. |
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Church was successful in New York. In 1848,
Frederic Edwin Church became one of the youngest artists to be
elected to the status of academician at the
National Academy of Design, and Frederic
Edwin Church was soon
training pupils of his
own, including Jervis McEntee and William
James Stillman. In the subsequent period,
Church emulated Cole’s art, painting
large-scale landscapes of the Hudson River
Valley and of New England. Influenced by the
writings of English theorist John Ruskin,
Frederic Edwin Church began to paint in a more precise manner,
focusing on specific effects of weather and
atmosphere. He was also inspired by the
writings of
Alexander von Humboldt, a German naturalist-explorer.
When Frederic Edwin Church paintings received
high praise, Church set off on a second
expedition in 1857. On this sojourn, Frederic Edwin Church traveled to Ecuador
with the landscape painter Louis Rémy Mignot.
It was on this trip that
he was able to concentrate on the scenery of
the Andes, and Frederic Edwin Church filled diaries and
sketchbooks with records of the vegetation
and the countryside. Characterized by vast
vistas and atmospheric detail, the paintings
that resulted from this
sojourn demonstrate his unique
approach. Among the great triumphs of the
artist’s career was Heart of the Andes
(1859; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York), in which he captured the essence
of the tropics. Another significant product
of this period in the
artist’s career was Niagara (1857; Corcoran
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), which
established Church as the leading
interpreter of the American spirit.
During the 1860s, Church continued to
travel, seeking subject matter for Frederic Edwin Church paintings. He continued to produce visions of the
tropics such as Twilight in the Wilderness
(1860; Cleveland Museum of Art) and Cotopaxi
(1862; The Detroit Institute of Art) until
1867, when Frederic Edwin Church took a year
and a half trip to Europe and the Middle
East. He first spent six
months in London and Paris, and then
continued on to Alexandria, Beirut,
Constantinople, Baalbeck, Petra, and
Jerusalem. Due to his
fascination with ancient civilizations,
Frederic Edwin Church also visited Naples, Paestum, and Greece. On
his return, he
stopped in London, in order to study the
works of Turner. The results of this trip were numerous oil
sketches and drawings that Frederic Edwin
Church used for a series of paintings
including The Parthenon (1871; The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and
Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives (1870;
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas
City, Missouri). |
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