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Frederic Edwin Church is the Hudson River School painter famous for landscapes that combine grandiose views with near-microscopic detail. His large-scale paintings of exotic locations such as Heart of the Andes and Cotopaxi, both inspired by his travels in South America, made him a household name across America and brought him wealth as well as fame. Of all the Hudson River School painters, he is the one who gravitated most to grandiose vistas of far-away places, and, interestingly, never produced large-scale studio works of the Hudson River Valley after he had established his career. This despite the fact that Church lived in the Hudson River valley, at Olana, the hilltop home he built. He did complete hundreds of oil sketches of the views from Olana and surrounding environs, to varying degrees of finish, but most of them focused on cloud and lighting effects (clouds were a lifelong enchantment to Church). Perhaps his early days spent studying in the Hudson River Valley with Cole, and his subsequent dwelling place there, made it feel too homey for the dramatic compositions he favored – at any rate, though he often studied it, he never used it as material for his grand pictures.

Church had a keen sense of drama and knew how to monetize it; during the peak of his fame in the 1850s and 60s, his latest “Great Picture” would be eagerly anticipated for up to two years before he actually exhibited it. In the manner of a blockbuster movie today, rumors would swirl in the art world that Church was off on another sketching expedition gathering material for a new painting, and once he began work on a large painting in his studio, it would be discussed as it was in-progress, even showing up in newspaper notices. The amount of publicity Church garnered for some of these large-scale paintings was remarkable, even in an age when painters held an amount of cultural influence similar to that held by filmmakers today.  He was strategic about showing these paintings once they were completed, too; rather than hanging them in a group exhibit (the most common procedure) he would exhibit his great paintings in a private gallery, in a room where the single painting hung by itself, and charge admission (25 cents) for viewing. This not only gave him immediate funds – several thousand people might come through the gallery – it created exclusivity and drew even more interest. For several of the works which did not sell immediately in New York (not surprising since they commanded top prices; Heart of the Andes sold for the highest price of any American painting up to that time), he sent the paintings to his agent in London, where the show was repeated. In addition to these admissions and the actual painting sale, Church monetized these dramatic vistas by offering them in limited editions of engravings and lithographs, another way to share his work with the public. 

Frederic Edwin Church, Study for Under Niagara, oil on paper, 1858

To balance out the high drama of his conceptions, Church was also a meticulous worker, fascinated by detail as well as the grand view, and would make endless on-location sketches and oil studies when preparing for a large work. A new painting could be several years in the making, from the time he started doing location studies to the completion of the final piece. No amount of preparatory work was too much; when on a sketching trip he would spend every daylight hour out-of-doors feverishly gathering ‘views’ to take back to the studio. However, in line with his good business sense, he made the time lavished on preparation count; he made two journeys to South America, and out of the material gathered there he made at least twelve large paintings. Three studio paintings came out of his single Arctic voyage, including his famous The Icebergs.

His studies vary in size and degree of finish – as any plein-air painter knows, there are many factors that can determine the amount of time one has on a painting, including changing light, weather, accessibility of path and ease of carrying supplies. His sketches vary accordingly, but he was interested in all of the natural world, and on his sketch trips would do studies ranging from mountain views to individual plants. Back in the studio, it was his practice to synthesize all of this material into a manufactured but ‘representative’ view that captured what he felt to be the essence of the locale. A good example of how he did this is his early painting New England Scenery, which is the first painting to use his trademark method of combining, re-mixing, and dramatizing that would make him famous. Although all of the individual elements are accurate and representative of New England, any New Englander will recognize that the painting is not of an actual location, but is rather an idealized and magnified view. This combination of features from across a region was to become his trademark – as if any one spot did not include enough for his curiosity and ambition. Although in the last years of his career this idealized realism would fall out of favor as Impressionism came into vogue, Church’s work has enjoyed renewed popularity in recent years for the lavish attention and sense of drama that Church brought to his paintings. 

Frederic Edwin Church, New England Scenery, oil on canvas, 1851

Frederic Edwin Church, Clouds Over Olana, oil on paper, 1872

Frederic Edwin Church, The Aegean Sea, oil on canvas, 1877