Paintings

Explore Church’s paintings

Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

Twilight in the Wilderness

The Icebergs

Rainy Season in the Tropics

El Rio de Luz

The Andes of Ecuador

Aurora Borealis

The Aegean Sea

Cotopaxi

The Parthenon

The Heart of the Andes

El Khasne, Petra

Our Banner in the Sky

Syria by the Sea

Above the Clouds at Sunrise

A Country Home

View of Cotopaxi

Coast Scene

Mount Ktaadn

Autumn in North America

Storm in the Mountains

Twilight in the Tropics

Illustrated by the 1879 wood engraving after Church’s painting.

Tamaca Palms

Tropical Scenery

Observation and the making of a landscape

Church trained with Thomas Cole from 1844 to 1846. Franklin Kelly’s study in the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition catalogue explains how the younger painter developed Cole’s example while giving natural forms increasingly precise description. Careful observation and deliberate composition worked together: the finished landscape was more than an accumulation of recognisable objects.^[1]

That relationship is visible across this selection. Nearby plants and rocks often have distinct edges, while distant slopes become softer and less sharply separated. A dark tree can make a bright horizon more conspicuous. Water can repeat the sky’s colour or draw attention through a succession of falls. Such devices organise our experience of space, even where individual details appear convincingly observed.

People also belong to these landscapes. Travellers, boat passengers and small figures establish scale or suggest ways of moving through the scene. Houses, bridges and ruins change its character. Their presence can be easy to miss in a small reproduction, yet it prevents the paintings from being understood simply as pictures of land without human activity.

The differences between works are equally revealing. Some offer a broad prospect; others conceal distance behind cloud, foliage or rock. Some place the spectator near an unsettling brink; others provide a sheltered bank. Comparing those positions helps explain how Church could make similar ingredients produce quite different encounters.

Early American landscapes, 1847–1854

These paintings establish several interests that continued throughout Church’s career: weather, the meeting of land and water, and the relationship between a nearby setting and a much larger distance. Their variety is apparent before his famous South American panoramas.

Storm in the Mountains, 1847

Storm in the Mountains makes a damaged tree an imposing presence against rock and cloud. The upright format presses its trunk and broken branches close to the spectator. Cleveland Museum of Art, which holds the painting, interprets the lightning-blasted tree through nature’s power and cycles of life and death. It is an early work in which the foreground carries much of the drama, rather than merely opening onto a distant view.^[2]

Above the Clouds at Sunrise, 1849

In Above the Clouds at Sunrise, mist conceals the valley while trees and rocks remain clearly described near the viewer. Height is felt through what cannot be seen below. The picture belongs to a private collection and is recorded by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a loan. Its glowing horizon offers a useful contrast with the solid, dark foreground: atmosphere interrupts the landscape without making its arrangement incoherent.^[3]

Coast Scene, 1852

Coast Scene brings jagged rocks and breaking water close to the lower edge. Beyond them, a sailboat occupies a more open sea beneath coloured clouds. This smaller, earlier canvas should be distinguished from Church’s later coastal paintings. Recorded in a private collection in the 1989 catalogue, it turns obstruction into an important part of looking: the nearby crags make the opening beyond them feel more expansive.^[1]

Mount Ktaadn, 1853

The distant summit in Mount Ktaadn rises above cattle, water, trees and small structures. Yale University Art Gallery holds the canvas under the title Mt. Ktaadn. Its wide sunset sky gives grandeur to a foreground containing ordinary activities. The painting rewards a comparison with Storm in the Mountains: here the landscape provides room for habitation beneath the mountain, while the earlier work makes a damaged tree dominate our immediate encounter.^[4]

A Country Home, 1854

A modest house stands among trees beside water in A Country Home, now at Seattle Art Museum. Clouds and reflected light occupy far more space than the dwelling itself. Cattle and a boat help make the landscape recognisable as somewhere people live and move. Look for the small bright opening associated with the house: its reflected glow provides a local point of attention within the much broader light of the sky.^[5]

Tropical journeys and expanding views, 1854–1859

Church’s South American travels supplied material for landscapes in which palms, rivers and snowy mountains appear together. The completed paintings arrange those observations into coherent experiences, with different degrees of openness, enclosure and dramatic scale.

Tamaca Palms, 1854

Tamaca Palms places tall palms beside a riverboat, with pale mountains beyond. The National Gallery of Art holds this painting from the period after Church’s first South American journey. Its foreground vegetation can be studied leaf by leaf, but the larger arrangement draws attention across water toward the distance. The palms are both distinctive subjects and structural elements: their tall stems and spreading crowns organise the view.^[6]

The Andes of Ecuador, 1855

In The Andes of Ecuador, a luminous sun joins mountain ridges, waterfalls and a foreground containing palms and small figures. The painting belongs to Reynolda House Museum of American Art. Its panorama extends the ambitions of the earlier tropical work. Instead of concentrating on one group of trees, Church distributes interest across a broad scene, inviting the spectator to move between near detail and successive layers of mountainous distance.^[7]

Autumn in North America, around 1856

Autumn in North America returns attention to a woodland interior, where cattle stand near water among red and golden leaves. This oil on board belongs to Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. Its enclosed space contrasts with the Andean panoramas. The title names a continent, yet the encounter feels local and intimate: trunks, branches and foliage restrict the distance while providing many smaller forms to inspect.^[8]

View of Cotopaxi, 1857

The Art Institute of Chicago’s View of Cotopaxi shows a snowy peak beyond a waterfall, luxuriant growth and a seated foreground figure. The museum records that Church completed it before his second Ecuadorian journey. This matters when comparing it with the erupting volcano of 1862. They are separate paintings of the same subject, and the quieter 1857 view gives plants, water and human presence substantial roles within the mountain landscape.^[9]

Niagara, 1857

Niagara places rushing water directly before the spectator, without a broad, reassuring strip of dry foreground. The immense horizontal view of Horseshoe Falls belongs to the National Gallery of Art. Its sweep is immediately powerful, but closer looking finds changing surfaces, foam and a partial rainbow. Compare it with Coast Scene: both bring water close, while Niagara makes the approach to the brink dominate almost the entire experience.^[10]

The Heart of the Andes, 1859

The Heart of the Andes, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, combines material from Church’s South American journeys into an expansive landscape informed by Alexander von Humboldt’s ideas. Its vegetation and changes of elevation invite prolonged inspection. In its original public exhibition, viewers could examine the painting with opera glasses. That practice suits a work whose first impression of grandeur gives way to discoveries of paths, water, plants and small human presences.^[11]

Ice, skies and weather, 1860–1866

During these years Church used natural spectacle in markedly different ways. Clouds could sustain a quiet view, suggest a flag, or make an unfamiliar northern scene appear extraordinary. The paintings’ settings and sources require individual attention.

Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860

Twilight in the Wilderness sets dark trees and land against a broad, coloured sky. Cleveland Museum of Art holds the painting and connects its composed view with Church’s Maine travels. Its sunset is often approached through the tensions preceding the American Civil War, though such a reading remains interpretation. Visually, the contrast between silhouetted foreground and luminous atmosphere gives the picture its force before any historical explanation is added.^[12]

Our Banner in the Sky, 1861

In Our Banner in the Sky, coloured clouds, stars and a bare tree suggest the American flag. The Terra Foundation’s version consists of oil over a lithograph on paper laid on cardboard. Its small scale distinguishes it from the large exhibition landscapes. The foundation relates the subject to the Union response after Fort Sumter, making this an especially direct example of weather and sky being organised into an immediately recognisable emblem.^[13]

The Icebergs, 1861

The Icebergs brings pale ice formations and dark water into a vast, unfamiliar setting. The Dallas Museum of Art painting grew from Church’s 1859 voyage toward Newfoundland and Labrador. It offers the pleasures of detailed surfaces without the vegetation or comfortable habitation found elsewhere in his work. The broken mast visible in the foreground was added later, changing the balance between a spectacle of natural forms and a suggestion of human vulnerability.^[14]

Cotopaxi, 1862

The Detroit Institute of Arts’ Cotopaxi presents the mountain in eruption. A spreading plume, intense sunlight and a foreground waterfall make several forms of movement compete for attention. The enormous view is distinct from the Chicago painting of 1857, even though both draw on Church’s Ecuadorian subject matter. Placing the two together reveals how a recurring mountain could support different relationships between fertile surroundings, atmospheric light and destructive power.^[15]

Aurora Borealis, 1865

Aurora Borealis, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, depicts a ship held in an icy landscape beneath extraordinary northern lights. Church drew on material supplied by his friend, Arctic explorer Isaac Israel Hayes. The image does not establish that Church himself travelled to Greenland. It makes a useful comparison with The Icebergs: both explore northern scenery, but here the sky’s luminous arcs dominate the relationship between vessel, rock and ice.^[16]

Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866

A double rainbow stretches over broken terrain in Rainy Season in the Tropics, held by the de Young in San Francisco. Church gives the two arcs a unifying role above cliffs, waterfalls and rich vegetation. Rain and shade occupy parts of the view while light reaches others. The picture is especially rewarding beside Aurora Borealis: each uses a conspicuous phenomenon to connect a sky with a complex landscape below.^[17]

Architecture and remembered travel, 1870–1874

Buildings became substantial subjects within Church’s later landscapes. Their treatment ranges from a distant city to a single monument glimpsed through rock. The paintings ask us to consider both architectural detail and the position from which it becomes visible.

Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, 1870

Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives places the city beyond a broad valley, with travellers and olive trees in the foreground. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art holds the painting. Its many buildings invite close examination, while the large sky and intervening ground sustain a panoramic impression. Notice how the foreground supplies a place from which to look without removing the considerable distance separating the spectator from Jerusalem.^[18]

The Parthenon, 1871

In The Parthenon, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the temple and scattered fragments occupy a rocky setting touched by warm light. Church’s Athens studies of 1869 preceded the finished canvas. Compare its solid columns and clear architectural presence with the more distant buildings in Jerusalem: the monument here becomes a principal form to examine, while broken stones nearby emphasise both its surviving structure and its condition as a ruin.^[19]

Syria by the Sea, 1873

Syria by the Sea, at the Detroit Institute of Arts, assembles ruins and a coastline beneath glowing evening light. A tall column dominates the near right, while more distant forms merge with the atmosphere. Kelly identifies the picture as a composed landscape drawing on Baalbek and Damascus studies. Its convincing details therefore belong to an arranged conception, rather than establishing one exact coastal viewpoint that a modern visitor could reproduce.^[20][1]

El Khasne, Petra, 1874

El Khasne, Petra uses an upright canvas to show the Treasury beyond dark sandstone walls. The painting belongs to Olana, Church’s former home. Rock conceals portions of the pale façade, making the approach part of the subject. Its narrow opening provides an instructive contrast with the broad architectural landscapes: Church can make looking feel like a gradual discovery instead of an uninterrupted survey.^[1]

Later tropical landscapes and a composite sea, 1873–around 1877

Church continued to make tropical pictures after the journeys that first supplied their material. Near vegetation and luminous distance recur, but their balance changes. These later works also show how atmosphere could unite scenery assembled from different observations.

Tropical Scenery, 1873

The Brooklyn Museum’s Tropical Scenery sets a mountain and distant settlement beyond water, with substantial trees framing the right. The low light makes the opening between mountain and foliage especially compelling. Rindge’s chronology records this painting as commissioned by Robert Hoe. It should be distinguished from another Church painting of the same title and year: a title alone is insufficient to identify the particular composition being discussed.^[1]

Twilight in the Tropics, 1874

Twilight in the Tropics is associated in Rindge’s chronology with A Tropical Moonlight, painted in 1874 for William H. Osborn. A wood engraving captioned A Tropical Moonlight appeared in G. W. Sheldon’s 1879 book. That historical print shows a large moon above water enclosed by dense trees and palms. It is a reproduction after the painting: its hatching describes forms and light, while offering no reliable guide to the canvas’s original colours.^[1][21]

El Rio de Luz, 1877

El Rio de Luz, or The River of Light, belongs to the National Gallery of Art. A low sun and luminous mist draw attention along water enclosed by dense vegetation. The nearer trunks, leaves and small birds encourage inspection, while farther forms become less distinct. Beside Tamaca Palms, it shows a different distribution of interest: the river leads us toward an increasingly uncertain distance instead of an emphatic mountain prospect.^[22]

The Aegean Sea, around 1877

The Aegean Sea, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, brings architectural forms associated with Church’s European and West Asian travels into a luminous composite landscape. Ruins and surviving buildings occupy different distances beneath a double rainbow. Its title does not make the entire arrangement one literal view. The painting gathers several kinds of historical presence into a common atmosphere, offering a particularly rich comparison with the more concentrated monument of The Parthenon.^[23]

Detail, unity and the pleasure of looking

Church’s detailed surfaces could divide opinion. Writing in 1879, Sheldon thought excessive elaboration sometimes weakened the unity and poetry of his work. Yet he praised the handling and sentiment of The Aegean Sea. His response shows a contemporary viewer weighing the claims of close description against the effect of a whole painting, rather than praising detail automatically.^[21]

The same question can guide a comparison today. Begin by noticing the largest divisions of light and shade, then follow a smaller feature through its surroundings. Finally, step back to see what holds the scene together. A rainbow, reflected sky, mountain silhouette or architectural opening can make the change between near and distant looking especially rewarding.