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for FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH
FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH
1826 - 1900
Church's career was meteoric, taking off when he was barely in his twenties, soaring in his thirties. Abruptly, in his late forties, Church's fame was eclipsed by a turnaround in public taste and by his own physical afflictions. It was never restored in his lifetime.
Born in 1826 in Hartford, Connecticut to a wealthy family, Church demonstrated early talent. In 1844, he became the pupil of the leading landscapist, Thomas Cole. A year later, at age 19, Church made his debut at the National Academy of Design and was named an associate member.
He established a studio in New York City in 1848 and took his first pupil, William Stillman. Ebullient, physically energetic and brilliant, Church developed an approach to landscape painting significantly different from the accepted landscapists, Cole and Asher Durand, of the Hudson River School. Church shed much of Cole's romanticism and allegory. He adopted Durand's realism and took it to new heights. Church believed the artist could capture the essence of nature by studying the natural sciences and, by bridging the division between light and form, create what he called "organic unity."
In 1853, he made his first trip to South America. During his seven month's travel in Colombia and Ecuador, Church painted views of volcanoes, jungles and the snow-capped Andes Mountains, journeying 600 miles up the Magdalena River.
His South American paintings were acclaimed at the National Academy of Design in 1855. The artist's first major painting from this trip, Andes of Ecuador (1855, Reynolds House), was a sensation. Perhaps his best-known works are Niagara Falls (1857, Corcoran Gallery) and Heart of the Andes (1859, Metropolitan Museum of Art).
In 1861, Church traveled to the Arctic to paint massive canvases of glittering icebergs and seas. After a later trip to Jamaica and tropics, he produced landscapes that some critics now fault as melodramatic.
In 1867, Church finally visited the Old World-Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa. He began to work in vigorous Masses, with a new intensity of manner.
Some believe Church's new approach might eventually have created a second ascent to popularity, but in 1877 inflammatory rheumatism began to cripple the artist's right hand. Church attempted to educate his left.
For the remaining 23 years of his life, Church divided his time between his fabulous Moorish-inspired home, "Olana," on the Hudson River, his camp near Mt. Katahdin, Maine, and travel in Mexico. Though his work was depreciated and unsought, he continued to produce numerous good oil sketches.
--American Art Analog, p. 216
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