Frederic Edwin Church was born in Hartford, Connecticut on May 4, 1826. A central figure of the Hudson River School of American painters, he is best known for his large, panoramic landscapes often showing mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets. Church was born into a wealthy Protestant family and was the only son of Joseph and Eliza Church. His father was extremely successful in business as a silversmith and jeweler and served as director at several financial firms. The family's wealth therefore allowed Church to pursue his interest in art from an early age.
Church had always shown a talent for drawing, and by the age of sixteen, he was studying drawing and painting in earnest. Two years later he became the first apprentice of English-born American landscape painter Thomas Cole (1801-1848) with the help of Daniel Wadsworth (1771-1848), a family neighbor, prominent collector and founder of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. Church would study with Cole for only two years, from 1842 to 1844, yet that time would prove deeply informative for the rest of Church’s career. Likewise, Wadsworth had played a formative role in Church’s life and was among the very first to recognize his exceptional talent. This launched Church on an impressive career that would see him become the most celebrated and financially fruitful artist in America. Within a year after ending his time with Cole, Church had been shown in the National Academy of Design’s annual exhibition, and the following year he sold his first major oil painting, titled Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford, in 1636—a pastoral landscape depicting Hooker’s journey to the Hartford’s Wadworth Atheneum in 1846.
Extraordinarily gifted as an artist and a colorist, Church reached his early maturity by 1848 and by the early 1850’s began producing prominent canvases that spoke to the great tensions and historical crisis of the Civil War. In the year 1860, Church bought farmland at Hudson, New York, and married Isabel Carnes, whom he had met during the exhibition of his Heart of the Andes in 1859. His marriage to both his wife and his farm became the joint center of his life, in later years tending to divert his attentions from painting major canvases.
In 1869, Church acquired a plot of land and began designing a home for him and his wife which would later be known Olana, an estate that still stands overlooking the Hudson River. Church’s work began to decrease in popularity towards the end of life, although he continued to paint throughout his later years. He continued to live at Olana until his death.
Frederic Edwin Church passed away at the age of 73 on April 7, 1900 in New York, NY.
By: Blake Gopnik
I found the show fascinating — but not at all because of the similarity that other critics seem to find between the two artists’ works, or any “sublimity” they share. For me, the show illustrates a really fundamental change that occurred in how pictures were used and viewed in the century that separated the works. With Church, we’re dealing with what I’ll call the “interpretative” model that has governed Western art for almost all its history: A work is about what you bring to it, as you try to winkle meanings out of all its various and very varied parts. It’s about sequential reading: sequential over time, as you look and try on one reading after another, and sequential across space, as you “read” each and every different area on the painting, with their very separate contents.
By Roberta Smith
The world could use a little uplifting sublimity right now, and this astounding two-artist show delivers. It brings together 17 paintings by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), exemplar of the Hudson River School, and 10 canvases by the Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko (1903-1970). They have been color-coordinated to delirious effect by the art historian Michael N. Altman and Christopher Rothko, Rothko’s son. Church, in particular, has rarely looked so good. Unburdened by representation, Rothko’s suspended blocks of autonomous color accentuate the strangeness of Church’s palette, especially the array of lavenders, pinks and yellows in his skies.
