Tag: Frederic Edwin Church

Thomas Cole Unbound: Biography of America’s Revered Landscape Painter

Born in England’s industrial northeast in 1801, artist Thomas Cole emigrated to America as a young man. Here, he found a country brimming with unchartered and untamed wilderness. His masterful handling of light, composition, and aerial perspective captured the sublime character of the American wilderness. Cole found his unique place as one of the first…


Frederic Edwin Church Captures the Pounding Presence of Niagara Falls

Like other landscape artists of the Hudson River School, Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) painted wild scenes of the new land: an American wilderness that most people had never seen for themselves. Church worked with such attention to detail that his paintings mesmerized the society of his day. A photographic portrait of Frederic Edwin Church, 1826,…


How 19th-Century Painters Frederic Edwin Church and Ferdinand Richardt Captured the Magnificent Beauty of Niagara Falls

“Their roar is around me. I am on the brink of the great waters—and their anthem voice goes up amid the rainbow and the mist.” —Excerpt from “Niagara,” Grenville Mellen, 1839 In the 19th century, realistically painted works of the Romantic period offered viewers in America, and across the Atlantic, the chance to glimpse the…


Olana House: A Look Inside 19th Century Painter Frederic Edwin Church’s Treasure on the Hudson River

On a ridge overlooking the Hudson River, artist Frederic Church composed his last, and perhaps grandest, work: a home and grounds for his family. He purchased the land above his first home, “Cosy Cottage,” before his trip to the Middle East and Europe. “I have just purchased the woodlot on the top of the hill….


How 19th-Century Painter Frederic Edwin Church Created Luminescent Art Full of Beauty and Hope

The story is told of a moment in the North Carolina mansion of Richard Joshua Reynolds, American businessman and founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. One of the family’s small children was staring intently at an extremely large canvas in the family parlor. His mother asked him what he was admiring in the painting….