Frederic Church


Book Description

A reconsideration of Church's works offering a sustained examination of the aesthetics of detail that fundamentally shaped 19th-century American landscape painting.




Frederic Church and the Landscape Oil Sketch


Book Description

A close look at Church s stunning landscape oil sketches and their role in the creation of his monumental paintings"




Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran


Book Description

The companion book to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's exhibition of the same name of America's scenic wonders captured by three of the greatest artists of the 19th century.




The Journey of Frederic Edwin Church Through Colombia and Ecuador, April-October 1853


Book Description

Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), one of the most representative characters of the Hudson River school, used to travel most part of the year to unknown territories with the intention of familiarizing with nature and take notes for his paintings. Inspired by Humboldt - the german humanist and scientist- and his expeditions, he started a journey that took him to diverse places in the world. Among those places, in 1853, he travelled the most exotic and remote places in Colombia and Ecuador. This book is an innovative contribution about his journey and shows for the first time most of the sketches and drawings made along his trip that now are part of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York.




Treasures from Olana


Book Description

"The wide variety of selections from Frederic Edwin Church's collection of his own paintings shows the master in all phases of his career, in sketches and finished paintings, depicting the breadth of his subjects and the high technical skills that established him as an eminent and influential artist in his own time. As works he held on to or reacquired and kept in his house during his lifetime, they embody the heart of his artistic vision and convey a deeply personal slant. As pictures he hung and lived with at Olana, they tell the larger story of that extraordinary place and are as illuminating when seen in context as on their own."--from the IntroductionFrederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) traveled the world, captured its beauty in countless paintings, and brought it home to live at Olana, his castle on the Hudson. The name was inspired by a reference Church found to a fortress or a treasury-storehouse in ancient Persia. This extraordinary selection of Church's paintings from his collection at Olana puts the most cherished of his treasures on full display in a volume that includes eighty color plates.Church's paintings, among the most acclaimed examples of art of the Hudson River School, are found in museums and private collections around the globe. However, Church kept some of his art close by during his lifetime. The rich collection that remains at Olana includes about seven hundred pieces, including notebooks, drawings, and oils, both sketches and completed canvases. They cover the full range of Church's career chronologically and thematically. The highlights from his personal collection are found in the touring exhibition that accompanies this book. The introduction by John Wilmerding and a substantial essay by Kevin J. Avery place the work into the context of Church's life and travels and examine Church's influences and the public reception of his art. Throughout Treasures from Olana, they discuss how profoundly Church's hilltop home and the surrounding landscape inspired and informed his work. His paintings, in turn, illuminate Olana more than a century after his death. The Olana Partnership, Hudson, N.Y., and New York State's Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, Albany, N.Y., organized Treasures from Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church.




Maine Sublime


Book Description

Maine provided sensational sunsets, robust waves crashing on rocky shores, and an abundance of wilderness well suited to Frederic Church's artistic vision. Maine Sublime brings together all of the Maine artwork in the Olana collection.




Frederic Church


Book Description

"One of Thomas Cole's illustrious pupils at an early age, Church became a key figure associated with the Hudson River School. His adventurous international travels and the paintings that resulted from his expeditions brought him far-reaching attention, and his pictures often commanded record-breaking sums. Church's friendships and interests - religion, history, literature, music, architecture, agriculture, and science - as well as his skills as a crafty entrepreneur are explored. Beautiful reproductions of Church's extraordinary home Olana, which one can visit today in eastern New York, are also featured."--BOOK JACKET.




Alexander Von Humboldt and the United States


Book Description

The enduring influence of naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt on American art, culture, and politics Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was one of the most influential scientists and thinkers of his age. A Prussian-born geographer, naturalist, explorer, and illustrator, he was a prolific writer whose books graced the shelves of American artists, scientists, philosophers, and politicians. Humboldt visited the United States for six weeks in 1804, engaging in a lively exchange of ideas with such figures as Thomas Jefferson and the painter Charles Willson Peale. It was perhaps the most consequential visit by a European traveler in the young nation's history, one that helped to shape an emerging American identity grounded in the natural world. In this beautifully illustrated book, Eleanor Jones Harvey examines how Humboldt left a lasting impression on American visual arts, sciences, literature, and politics. She shows how he inspired a network of like-minded individuals who would go on to embrace the spirit of exploration, decry slavery, advocate for the welfare of Native Americans, and extol America's wilderness as a signature component of the nation's sense of self. Harvey traces how Humboldt's ideas influenced the transcendentalists and the landscape painters of the Hudson River School, and laid the foundations for the Smithsonian Institution, the Sierra Club, and the National Park Service. Alexander von Humboldt and the United States looks at paintings, sculptures, maps, and artifacts, and features works by leading American artists such as Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Frederic Church, and Samuel F. B. Morse. Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Exhibition Schedule Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC September 18, 2020–January 3, 2021




Frederic Church's Olana


Book Description

The landscape, farm, house and collections that comprise Olana are a work of art conceived and executed by the preeminent mid-19th-century American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826 to 1900). Considered one of the most perfectly realized visions of harmony between people and their natural surroundings, Olana is a landmark of Picturesque landscape gardening with a Persian-inspired house at its summit embracing unrivaled panoramic views of the Hudson Valley. A rare American confluence of art and farming, aesthetics and conservation, landscape painting and landscape design, Olana represents a masterpiece of human creative genius. Features 74 photographs (31 full-color paintings and house interiors) and a foreword by Franklin Kelly, National Gallery of Art.




Glories of the Hudson


Book Description

"In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name. The exhibition and its accompanying publication Glories of the Hudson: Frederic Edwin Church's Views from Olana mark the quadricentennial of his discovery by highlighting Frederic Church's sketches of the prospect from his hilltop home overlooking the river. Church made his first sketch of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains from Red Hill--the south end of the property that became his home, Olana--in 1845, on a sketching expedition suggested by his teacher Thomas Cole. Returning to the Hudson Valley in 1860 as the nation's most famous and best-paid artist, Church settled on a farm on the lower slope of the Sienghenbergh, securing for himself and his new wife a splendid vantage point for studying, sketching, and painting the river. Church continued to add land to his property, attaining new and varied vistas of the river, and crowned the estate with a Persian-inspired house designed to frame splendid views of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. Church never tired of his views of the river, documenting his passion for the Hudson in paintings, oil sketches, and drawings. From Olana, he observed the transformations wrought by the changing seasons, weather, and light, capturing chilly winter snows, brilliant sunsets, and passing storms in sketches executed with a few brushstrokes or autumn colors and clear winter light in more finished easel paintings. The best of these are reproduced here, in eighty-three illustrations, sixty-nine in full color, some of them published for the first time. The essay by Evelyn D. Trebilcock and Valerie A. Balint, the introduction by Kenneth John Myers, and the foreword by John K. Howat together provide an absorbing narrative of the development of the Hudson River School and its most successful artist." -- Publisher's description.