![]() ![]() This canvas shows some crucial changes in Church’s work: No human figures are present, and an old schooner forced onto the rocks now occupies the foreground. In October 1851, Church returned to Mount Desert, actively painting and sketching, gathering material for The Wreck (see fig. Featuring a man in the foreground pulling in over the rocks the remains of a wrecked vessel, the sky is a crisp deep blue and autumn colors dot the forests, but it is the turbulent surf and looming mountainside that address nature’s more awesome character. 5), synthesizing selected aspects he had recorded by pencil on separate sheets. In his New York studio later that fall, he began to compose a large canvas of the view (Fig. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.ĭuring his first trip Church also undertook several drawings of Newport Mountain from varying distances and slightly different angles, almost as if he were photographing it with changing zoom and wide-angle lenses. 5 : Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), Newport Mountain, Mount Desert, 1851. 4 : Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), Lumber Mill, Mount Desert Island, ca. Birch Tree Struck by Lightning (Olana, Hudson, New York) executed in the manner of Cole, suggests God’s hand in the life of nature, but Church’s sketches were far more specific and identifiable in their execution than Cole’s.Ĭhurch found the lumber mills, either under construction or in operation around the island, a lively subject to sketch, later producing the finished oil painting Lumber Mill, Mount Desert Island, circa 1850 (Fig. 3) is a close-up sketch of the compressed cubic blocks of quartz and granite across the rock face of Otter Cliffs. Granite Cliffs, Mount Desert Island (Fig. On his first trip to Maine in 1850, Church was eager to visit particular views his mentor Cole had sketched. ![]() Church would tackle a similar subject when he painted The Wreck (Fig. In the exclamatory language of the sublime, these influential artists celebrated nature’s dual pastoral and awesome, even destructive, elements. Olana, OL (1977.112)Īt the same time, several other artistic and literary forces then coming to fruition-Andreas Achenbach (1815–1910), Fitz Henry Lane (1804–1865), and New England author Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)-shaped Church’s ambition to try new subjects along the Maine coast. Graphite on light brown paper, 10-13/16 x 15 inches. Image © 1929 The Parthenon Museum, Nashville, Tennessee.Īfter Cole’s death in 1848, Church’s maturing style followed the evolving taste toward a more exacting and explicit recording of sites, but his teacher’s work in that exotic coastal wilderness obviously impressed him deeply.įig. The Parthenon, Nashville, Tennessee (29.2.14). Desert Island, After a Squall (Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati).įig. Over the next year he created at least three canvases based on his trip, including View across Frenchman’s Bay from Mt. In 1844 Cole decided to make an excursion to the Maine coast and Mount Desert Island, where he filled his sketchbook with more than a dozen pencil drawings of the surrounding area as well as panoramic views of and from the island itself. From 1844 to 1846 Church studied with Thomas Cole (1801–1848), the foremost landscape artist of the day, in Catskill, New York. How Church came to travel to Maine relates to his initial artistic training. Over the thirty-year period, Church made more than a dozen trips to Maine, nearly half to Mount Desert during the 1850s and the remainder to the Katahdin region mostly in the two decades following. Where his earlier production was extroverted and exclamatory, the latter was often nostalgic and withdrawn. The work done in Maine during the 1850s and early 1860s, primarily at Mount Desert, embodied sentiments of increasing national strife, in symbolic and suggestive ways, while his career of the later 1860s and into the 1880s was devoted more to Church’s personal time in inland Maine around Mount Katahdin. His paintings address both history and autobiography. 1), based on a sunset he had sketched at Bar Harbor, Maine, a few years earlier, ranking among the dozen greatest paintings in the history of American art.Ĭhurch was a public and a private artist. ![]() Further, many believe his work done in Maine includes some of his most important images, with Twilight in the Wilderness (Fig. ![]() W e now recognize Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) as one of America’s great artists of the nineteenth century. 1 : Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |