Tropical Scenery

A commission after the South American journeys

Debora Rindge’s chronology in the National Gallery of Art’s 1989 Church catalogue lists this 1873 canvas as a commission for Robert Hoe, made long after Church’s South American journeys.^[2]

That interval is useful when looking at the picture. Church continued to draw on tropical subjects after returning to the United States, and this landscape belongs to a later stage of that engagement. Its arrangement offers a coherent experience of distant mountain, inhabited plateau, quiet water and sheltered foreground. It need not be treated as the record of a single moment during a journey.

The mountain and the descending ridges

The principal mountain occupies much of the left half. Its upper outline is softened by haze, but the summit remains clearly distinguishable against the sky. Broad slopes descend toward lower ridges, creating a sequence of overlapping forms that carries the eye across the centre of the painting.

The mountain’s muted grey and brown tones differ from the darker vegetation close to the spectator. Its size is impressive, yet the softened surface makes it appear remote. Church can therefore give the peak considerable prominence without making it feel as close as the tree or ledge on the right.

Lower hills introduce intermediate distances. Some slopes catch warm light, while others remain shaded. These changes help separate one ridge from the next, even where their outlines are faint. Looking slowly across them reveals that the apparent simplicity of the large mountain depends on a more varied arrangement beneath it.

The settlement sits well below the summit, on a relatively level strip of elevated ground. Its small buildings provide another measure of scale. Their presence makes the mountain seem larger, while also giving the eye a place to pause between the broad upper slopes and the water below.

A branching tree frames the sun

The large tree on the right forms a counterweight to the mountain. Its trunk rises from the near bank and divides into substantial branches, spreading a canopy across the upper part of the canvas. Unlike the hazy peak, the tree presents a more immediate network of foliage, limbs and irregular edges.

A pale sun appears beneath the canopy, to the left of the trunk. The surrounding sky is bright and golden, so the small disk does not need a hard outline to attract attention. Dark leaves and branches make this light especially noticeable. Church brings the distant glow close to the silhouette of something standing beside us.

The tree also limits the view. Dense vegetation fills the right edge, while the canopy projects over the illuminated opening. That framing encourages the spectator to look outward from shade, rather than imagine floating above an entirely unobstructed panorama.

This balance gives the picture much of its character. The mountain supplies breadth and height; the tree creates enclosure. The sun draws the two into relation through light that passes between them. Together they make a scene that can feel extensive and sheltered at the same time.

Still water holds the middle distance

Water stretches across the lower middle of the painting. The darker left-hand area lies beneath the mountain and plateau, while a brighter passage opens toward the right, nearer the sun. Reflected light joins the water to the glowing atmosphere beyond it.

Its relatively quiet surface slows the movement through the picture. The mountain slopes descend, the tree branches spread, and the nearby ground is uneven; the water provides a broader, calmer area among those more complicated forms. It allows the surrounding shadows and highlights to remain distinct.

The far shore separates water from the plateau, but haze softens more distant boundaries. Church makes the scene readable without defining every transition equally sharply. The spectator can recognise the principal parts, then continue exploring the less certain spaces between them.

A seated figure and a distant settlement

The seated figure occupies the rocky foreground near the centre-right. Its position suggests a place from which to contemplate the view, although the picture does not supply a detailed explanation of the person’s circumstances. The figure is small beside the nearby tree and much smaller in relation to the mountain.

This scale makes human presence easy to overlook at first. Once noticed, however, the figure changes the experience of the foreground. The ledge becomes somewhere a person can occupy, and the distant light becomes a view that someone within the painting can also see.

The settlement across the water adds a different kind of habitation. Its buildings gather into a narrow cluster on the plateau, where their small vertical accents interrupt the surrounding hills. The near individual and distant settlement connect two human scales within the same landscape: a person pausing at its edge and a community established farther away.

Those details prevent the scenery from appearing wholly uninhabited. They also remain subordinate to the mountain, sky and tree. Church includes people and buildings without allowing them to become the principal drama of the composition.

Observation, distance and remembered scenery

Church’s first South American journey took him through Colombia and Ecuador in 1853 with Cyrus W. Field. He returned to Ecuador in 1857 with the painter Louis Remy Mignot. Rindge’s chronology records these itineraries, which preceded the Brooklyn canvas by twenty and sixteen years respectively.^[2]

Art historian William H. Gerdts reads Tropical Scenery as a nostalgic return to South American experience. He draws attention to its lack of precise geological identification and to the presence of both the foreground figure and a small city on the plateau. His interpretation emphasises the distance between Church’s earlier travels and the later painting.^[3]

The softened mountain and enveloping light make that reading persuasive. They invite recognition of a kind of landscape without supplying a firmly identified location. The picture’s effect rests on relationships between its parts: shelter and openness, nearby detail and distant haze, quiet water and imposing landforms.

Church’s drawings and studies show how sustained observation formed part of his practice. Recognising that background does not identify every feature in this canvas or prove that a particular surviving sketch was its direct preparation. The finished landscape can be appreciated through what Church has brought together here.

Titles and collecting history

The Smithsonian’s painting inventory records South American Landscape as an alternative title for Brooklyn’s Tropical Scenery. Its provenance lists Robert Hoe and a sale at Leavitt Art Galleries in New York on 28 February 1882, lot 156, followed by later owners and dealers.^[4]

The catalogue separately illustrates Delaware Art Museum’s 1873 Tropical Scenery as number 48. Its prominent palms and arched bridge differ from Brooklyn’s mountain, branching tree and foreground figure. Collection names help distinguish two paintings with the same title and date.^[2]

Comparing Tropical Scenery with The River of Light

Church returned to tropical imagery in El Rio de Luz, or The River of Light, painted in 1877 and now in the National Gallery of Art. There, wooded banks enclose a river that recedes toward a low sun and misty opening.^[5]

Both works direct attention toward light beyond nearby vegetation. Their viewpoints produce different journeys for the eye. Brooklyn’s canvas looks across water toward an expansive mountainous setting; The River of Light draws the spectator along the water between enclosing banks. In each, the shadowed foreground makes the illuminated distance more compelling.

Return to Tropical Scenery and follow the view from the seated figure to the bright water, then across the plateau toward the mountain. Look finally at the tree branches over the sun. This sequence brings its different scales into relation and shows how much the painting’s calm depends on arrangement. Its appeal develops through the experience of moving between shelter, habitation and distance.

Discussion Questions

• How do the tree and mountain offer different kinds of scale and distance?
• What changes when you notice the seated figure and the settlement?
• How does the view across the water differ from the riverbank viewpoint in El Rio de Luz?