AMERICAN LANDSCAPE PAINTERSFrederick Edwin Church
SIX
Many people like to find something unusual or striking in a picture. To these the paintings of Frederick Edwin Church make a special appeal. The range of Church’s art is wide, and covers subjects chosen from many parts of the world. Before cameras were invented nobody could tell, unless he went there himself, just what a tropical forest looked like. Therefore, when Church wanted to paint something mysterious and wonderful he traveled to South America, among the mountains and through jungles of which few people in northern countries had any idea. It was not strange that critics should praise the landscapes he painted on his return,—scenes by moonlight across a luxuriant growth of palms and creepers, or high mountain peaks with animals of the tropics lurking about the foreground. So enthusiastically were his canvases received, both at home and abroad, that the young artist soon revisited those regions, and made further studies, which met with equal success. The greatest of his South American works is “The Heart of the Andes.”
Feeling at length that he had learned enough of one country, and desiring a wider field for his genius, Church turned northward. “Niagara Falls from the Canadian Shore” is a picture known to everyone. A journey to Labrador gave him new opportunities, quite the opposite of what he had experienced in the tropics. We have the result in “Icebergs,” one of his best canvases. For him nothing was too difficult. Soon afterward Church left America, made southern Europe his study, and went on from there into Palestine. “The Parthenon,” a picture showing that magnificent temple in the middle distance, with no other object prominent enough to lessen the majesty of its ancient ruined architecture, is the most famous record of this European period in the artist’s life.
Church painted on very large canvases, and was painstaking to the smallest detail. A pioneer in the landscape art of America, he had all the directness and bigness of the pioneer. “The Heart of the Andes” and the “Niagara” give him a permanent place in the history of American painting.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATIONILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 26, SERIAL No. 26