Drawings

Observation and the composed landscape

Church began a two-year apprenticeship with Thomas Cole in 1844. Franklin Kelly describes Cole’s commitment to landscapes that drew on nature while allowing the painter to compose and imagine. This supplied a model in which careful observation and a finished picture’s larger arrangement could serve different purposes.^[1]

Kelly also relates Church’s approach to Alexander von Humboldt’s ideas about landscape painting. In this account, detailed studies made before nature could provide the foundation for ambitious views that conveyed the character of a region. The finished painting could combine material gathered on a journey rather than reproduce one location exactly.

A study therefore asks to be considered on its own terms. It might concentrate on the structure of a tree, the position of a figure, a change in illumination or the distribution of large shapes. Its omissions can be informative. Where a sheet leaves much of the paper untouched, the concentrated marks show what received the artist’s attention.

This variety is particularly valuable when comparing drawings with paintings. A recognisable element may survive while its surroundings, scale or lighting change. The drawing records one stage of thought; the larger canvas shows how that material became part of a different visual whole.

Graphite, white heightening and the paper itself

The National Gallery of Art identifies Magdalena River, New Granada, Equador, 1853, as graphite heightened with white on wove paper. Its sheet measures 18 × 27.2 centimetres. The museum’s description establishes the materials without specifying the binder of the white additions.^[2]

The drawing demonstrates how much colour and atmosphere can be suggested with a restricted range of tones. Dark graphite describes palms, tangled foreground plants and a thatched building on the right. Lighter lines carry the eye across the water toward hills. White passages mark the mountain tops and horizontal gleams on the river.

Between these dark and light additions, the paper provides a middle tone. It remains visible across the broad sky and much of the distant ground. Its presence helps connect passages that Church has treated with very different degrees of detail. The foreground is crowded with marks, while the farther landscape can be understood through a few boundaries.

White heightening has more than one role here. On the mountains it forms irregular patches; on the water it spreads into long, narrow bands. The change in shape helps distinguish solid distant forms from a reflective surface. We can follow that distinction without needing a full palette of blue water, green leaves and coloured clouds.

Even within the graphite, the marks vary considerably. Fine curved strokes describe palm fronds, darker clusters thicken the undergrowth, and faint contours suggest the slopes beyond. Church adjusts the density and direction of his drawing to the different things he is describing. That variation gives the sheet both spatial depth and a sense of material difference.

A landscape brought together on one sheet

Magdalena River offers a useful starting point because it contains an organised landscape rather than a single isolated motif. A sailing boat crosses the left-hand water, while the right-hand bank carries the tallest palms and most concentrated foliage. The broad interval between them gives the river room to extend into the distance.

The hut on the right introduces human occupation into the densely vegetated bank. A small cross above its roof makes a sharp upright mark, answering the taller verticals of the palms nearby. The building’s comparatively straight edges also differ from the surrounding curves of leaves and branches.

Farther back, a white mountain summit rises beyond the water and the middle ground. Its bright shape attracts attention without the dense graphite used nearer the spectator. The sheet offers two kinds of visual emphasis: dark complexity close at hand and a pale, simplified form in the distance.

The eye can travel through the drawing by following those differences. Start with the river’s white bands, move toward the boat, then return across the bank’s heavier marks and look upward to the mountains. This movement reveals how Church could establish a large landscape through the relationship between a few strongly differentiated areas.

Its historical title includes both New Granada and “Equador.” The title is useful for identifying the work, but it should not be treated as a precise map coordinate. The composition itself rewards attention to its arrangement, independently of an unverified attempt to locate every peak and building.

A palm studied separately

In Tamaca Palm, Colombia or Ecuador, Church gives a single plant most of the sheet’s attention. Cooper Hewitt dates the graphite drawing to May–October 1853 and records its medium as graphite on gray laid paper. A second palm appears much more faintly on the right.^[3]

The main tree’s trunk rises through a large area of lightly marked paper. At its top, the crown becomes much denser. Curved strokes follow the outward movement of the fronds, while darker hanging clusters gather beneath them. The contrast between slender trunk and full canopy makes the plant’s overall structure easy to recognise.

The faint neighbouring outline creates another useful comparison within the sheet. One tree is examined with considerable attention; the other receives only enough marks to suggest its position and form. This unequal treatment shows that a drawing need not distribute its effort evenly to be useful.

The open ground around the plant also changes the experience of looking. We can inspect the trunk and crown without competing details from a riverbank or distant mountain. The sheet separates a particular motif from the larger landscape in which it might later appear.

Franklin Kelly connects the drawing with the tall palm in Church’s 1854 painting Tamaca Palms. He considers it likely that Church also used the study for smaller palms, varying their fronds. The comparison shows how one closely observed form could support several appearances within a composed scene.^[4]

A boat, people and written information

Mixed Sketches with a Champan, Río Magdalena, Colombia places a covered riverboat across the centre of a sheet dated May 1853. The graphite drawing records its long hull, arched covering and two seated figures. Below it are separate studies of a woman, a tree and a thatched hut.^[5]

These smaller subjects make the page feel like a gathering of observations. They occupy their own areas instead of joining the boat in one continuous scene. The paper holds several things that interested Church, allowing him to consider a person, vegetation, a building and a vessel within the same working space.

The boat’s covering receives particular attention. Repeated curved and crossing lines describe its construction, while the dark opening at the end distinguishes an interior from the lighter exterior. The figures help indicate its size and show how people occupied it.

Handwritten notes add information that graphite alone could not fully retain. Church describes a late twilight effect, a fire in the bow and the illumination of figures against cooler evening colour. Drawing and writing work together: the lines preserve forms and positions, while the note recalls a changing effect of light.

Kelly identifies this vessel as a champan or bongo and relates it to the boat in Tamaca Palms. The positions of the figure at the front and the figure above the covering carry into the painting. Yet the finished canvas places the boat in daylight and includes another person. The connection is specific, while the differences show Church adapting the observed material to his composition.^[4]

Seen alongside the finished painting, the palm and boat studies reveal complementary tasks. One isolates a plant’s form; the other records construction, people and illumination. Church could bring these different kinds of information together in a broader landscape.

Planning Rainy Season in the Tropics

The preparatory drawing for Rainy Season in the Tropics addresses the arrangement of a complete picture. Cooper Hewitt dates it to 1865–1866 and identifies graphite on white notepad paper ruled in blue ink. The small sheet measures 13.4 × 20.6 centimetres.^[6]

Two large arcs extend over a mountainous scene. Beneath them, peaks rise on the left, water descends through the centre, and palms occupy the right foreground. A rectangular boundary helps contain this landscape within the sheet. The broad relationship between rainbow, mountains and vegetation is established before colour distinguishes their surfaces.

The drawing also includes a building above the cliff on the left. That feature is absent from the finished painting’s corresponding area. Looking between the two makes a compositional change visible: a small architectural accent gives way to the more continuous mass of rock in the canvas.

The final Rainy Season in the Tropics develops the double rainbow through coloured bands, surrounding rain and atmospheric contrasts. The drawing works through the placement of its arcs. It lets us see how a striking effect could also provide a structure that unites different parts of a scene.

This sheet is especially useful for understanding the distinction between recording and planning. Its purpose concerns the relationships across a picture: how high the bows rise, where the palms stand, and how the water leads inward. The ruled paper remains visible behind the graphite, reminding us of the modest physical surface on which Church considered a much larger painted landscape.

Oil studies within a works-on-paper collection

Church’s oil study of Al-Khazneh, Petra provides a different kind of example. Cooper Hewitt records oil and graphite on tan paperboard, dated February–March 1868. Its catalogue category includes “Drawing,” but the painted surface is central to its effect.^[7]

The carved facade appears in warm orange and reddish tones between dark canyon walls. Its columns and triangular pediments receive comparatively controlled marks. Around them, broad strokes follow the irregular rock surfaces, and small patches of green suggest plants near the lower edge.

This contrast between architectural order and rough stone is visible within the handling of the paint. The building calls for repeated uprights and recognisable divisions. The surrounding cliffs allow larger, more varied strokes. A blue opening near the upper left offers a glimpse of sky without dissolving the sense of enclosure.

The study shows what colour could add to an architectural record. Warmth, shadow and the difference between carved and uncarved stone become immediate parts of the image. It can be approached alongside Church’s later Petra painting, while retaining its identity as a separate 1868 oil-and-graphite work.

Such examples explain why discussions of Church’s drawings often include oil sketches. Both belong to his surviving working material, though their media produce different kinds of marks. Naming those media preserves the distinction and makes comparison more useful.

Jamaica and the wider purposes of sketching

Church’s 1865 Jamaican studies range across plants, mountain views and changing light. Cooper Hewitt’s 2026 exhibition announcement describes graphite drawings, graphite-and-gouache sheets and oil studies made during the journey. Its curators place them within the aftermath of the deaths of Church’s two young children and the island’s history under British colonial rule.^[8]

This context expands the questions we can ask of a botanical study. The plants are closely examined forms, but they also belong to a place encountered by a visitor under particular personal and historical circumstances. Curatorial interpretation can bring those circumstances into view while the individual sheets retain their visual specificity.

The same announcement emphasises Church’s written annotations. Dates, names and brief comments can connect an image with the conditions of its making. Their value lies in the information they actually preserve; a drawing’s appearance alone cannot explain every feeling or intention behind it.

Preservation at Cooper Hewitt and Olana

Gail Davidson’s account of the Cooper Hewitt gift describes how Eliot Clark and Charles Worthington Gould selected work at Olana with Church’s son Louis. The historical selection comprised 514 oil sketches and 1,521 graphite drawings. Clark made preliminary choices in November 1916; material was shown at a museum reception in April 1917.^[9]

This history helps explain why so much working material can now be studied together. Sheets made in different places and for different purposes remained available for selection as a substantial group. Their survival allows comparison across journeys and between detailed observations and compositional ideas.

Olana preserves another important body of work. Its current collection description includes more than 1,300 paintings and sketches by Church, with architectural and decorative designs among them. A window design combines watercolour and graphite; a sketch for dining-room stencil decoration uses oil and graphite. Drawing also supported the creation of Church’s own environment.^[10]

How to look at a Church drawing

Begin by noticing where the marks gather. Dense foliage, a sharply described boat or a strongly drawn rainbow may identify the sheet’s principal concern. Then look at the quieter areas. Open paper and faint contours can show how much information was sufficient for Church’s immediate purpose.

Next, distinguish the materials. White additions may create highlights against the paper, graphite may describe both outline and shade, and oil can record relationships of colour. Finally, compare any documented connection with a finished painting. The most revealing questions concern what remained, what changed and how a small observation acquired a new role within the larger scene.