![]() In volume two of Cosmos (1849), he wrote specifically about landscape painting and gave advice to the current generation of artists, such as: Humboldt was keenly interested in the kinship between art and science. Humboldt took an expedition through South America in 1799-1804, a voyage that later inspired his admirer Church’s own pair of trips there. He was brilliant, collaborative, a fervent abolitionist, and a supporter of Indigenous rights. Humboldt wasn’t just any old scientist, however. If his name sounds familiar, that’s because he’s had so many geographic features named for him. Among his numerous contributions to natural science, he was the first person to realize that all the world’s ecosystems are interconnected. ![]() Humboldt’s books, notably the five-volume Cosmos, were best sellers in many languages. Think of him as a sort of grandfather to most disciplines of modern natural science. Hero to Enlightenment-era intellectuals everywhere, Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was a Prussian explorer, natural scientist, and writer. He traveled all over the world, his journeys were partly inspired by the works of Alexander von Humboldt.įriedrich Georg Weitsch, Portrait of Alexander von Humboldt, 1806, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany. As the name suggests, the school is most closely associated with American scenery, but Church is better known for his paintings of foreign settings. However, one of the painting’s most important features doesn’t appear on the canvas at all – the pioneering scientist who was the inspiration behind it.įrederic Edwin Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA.įrederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) was among the most celebrated members of American landscape painting movement the Hudson River School. Frederic Edwin Church’s crowning achievement depicts the scenery he saw during his two visits to South America. By the time he died in 1900 he was a forgotten artist.Heart of the Andes is one truly impressive landscape painting. His success began to wane in the 1870s and in 1880, suffering badly from rheumatism, he abandoned the large format and concentrated on decorating his house and depicting its appearance under different climatic conditions in small oil sketches. In 1860 Church, by then at the peak of his career, married Isabel Carnes and bought a plot of land overlooking the Hudson River, where he built Olana, a Persian-style country mansion where he spent his last years. His travelling companion Reverend Louis Legrand Noble, Thomas Cole’s biographer, published an account of the expedition in After Icebergs with a Painter (1861). He visited the Labrador Peninsula, Newfoundland and painted several iceberg landscapes. In 1859 Church exchanged the tropical regions for the distant North. ![]() The showing of his painting of The Niagara Falls (Washington, Corcoran Gallery of Art) in 1857 in New York, London and other European cities earned him a reputation as the great American painter. He also made several visits to the Niagara Falls, another of the places of pilgrimage for painters of the time. The sketches he produced during his travels gave rise to some of the most memorable paintings of the Cayambe, Cotopaxi and Chimborazo volcanoes. Following in Humboldt’s footsteps, he made two trips to South America in spring 1853 and in 1857. Cosmos taught him the harmonious unity of the universe, which Church translated into grandiose works combining broad panoramas with an almost scientific study of the details. The writings of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) would have a determining influence on Church’s work. ![]() His exhibition at the American Art Union in 1847 established him as one of the most promising young artists of the day. In 1845 he made his debut at the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design, of which he later became a member and where his works were shown continuously throughout his career. Little by little, the theories of John Ruskin, from whom Church learned that a thorough study of nature could reveal the essential truths of the world, distanced him from the moralistic and epic landscapes of his master. Church was the first student of Thomas Cole, the father of the Hudson River School, who instilled in him his allegorical and majestic vision of the American scenery, which is already apparent in the young painter’s earliest landscapes of New England.
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