Frederic Edwin Church Oil Painting Reproductions

Who was Frederic Edwin Church?

Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape artist born in Hartford, Connecticut on May 4th, 1826. He associates with and serves as a central figure in the Hudson River School of American Artists. Frederic Church trained under the tutelage of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School Painters. Both Church and Cole painted oil on canvas artworks.

Frederick Edwin Church's family was among the first to leave British settlements in Massachusetts and establish the Connecticut Colony in 1636.

Church came from a rich family, which helped him become an artist. When he was 18 in 1844, he went to Catskill, New York, to learn from Thomas Cole. He stayed with Cole for two years and developed his natural talent.

Thomas Cole influenced his painting style. Frederic Edwin Church was also inspired by Romanticism paintings and art from Europe in the early 1800s.

European Romanticism artists frequently painted nature in idealized scenes which Church uses in his famous landscape paintings. He used sketches from different places for his oil paintings. New England Scenery, 1851, is his first artwork made from different sketches.

Church was also influenced by the explorer and scientist Alexander von Humboldt and his book Kosmos, proposing that science, the natural world, and spirituality are interconnected.

Oil on canvas paintings from the mid-1800s by the English Romantic artist J. M. W. Turner, reflect the style adopted by Frederic Edwin Church, with his intense color palette, big bright skies, and sunsets.

What Art Style is Frederic Edwin Church?

As a pupil of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School in the early 1800s, Church’s early style followed that of Cole and the Hudson River School.

Thomas Cole was born in Lancashire in England, and his family moved to America in 1818, settling in Catskill, New York. He traveled extensively in the Hudson Valley, sketching the scenery and landscapes. Thomas Cole’s most famous is the 1833 painting The Titan’s Goblet, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

After Cole’s early death in 1848, a second generation of Hudson River School artists became more prominent, with Frederic Edwin Church being the best known. Oil paintings by Church and Thomas Cole evidence their interest in Luminism art, which has its roots in European Romanticism.

Famous Luminism Art

Famous oil paintings The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich and fellow Hudson River School artist Albert Bierstadt's painting, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, are both Luminism artworks.

Apart from Church, famous American Luminism painters include Fitz Henry Lane, Martin Johnson Heade, and John F. Kensett.

During the 1850’s Church traveled extensively in South America, painting famous landscapes of The Andes Mountains and the jungles of Colombia and Ecuador. Church also completed several sunset paintings while in South America. On his visits to Europe, he spent time in Paris, Rome, and Athens, where he was most impressed with the Parthenon.

Frederic Edwin Church Famous Landscape Paintings

1. Heart of the Andes oil on canvas painting by Frederic Church. This is his most famous painting dating from 1859. This oversized canvas is over 5 feet high and 10 feet long, causing a sensation when it was first shown in 1859 at New York’s Tenth Street. The painting is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
2. Niagara Paintings. Frederic Edwin Church's oil on canvas painting Niagara 1857 is considered the finest landscape oil painting by any American artist. This is another large-scale painting held by the National Gallery of Art, part of the Corcoran Collection.
3. Church painted two other paintings of Niagara Falls. Under Niagara 1862, which is now lost, and Niagara Falls, from the American Side 1867. This is the largest painting Church ever painted by surface area, 101 x 89 inches. This oil on canvas painting is held by the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburg, Scotland, having been bought by the Scottish American philanthropist John S. Kennedy and gifted to the Museum.
4. Cotopaxi Paintings by Frederic Edwin Church. Cotopaxi 1862 is an oil on canvas painting completed on his return trip from Ecuador. Cotopaxi is a volcano and the second-largest peak in the country. Philanthropist James Lenox commissioned the painting, and the Detroit Institute of Art owns it.
5. Frederic Edwin Church The Icebergs. Frederic Edwin Church’s most expensive painting is The Icebergs 1861. Another large oil on canvas painting inspired by his visit to the North Atlantic and the Arctic in 1859. The buyer exhibited it in New York City in 1861 and then sent it to England.
6. A private owner in Manchester held it for 78 years until someone rediscovered it in 1979. AFL founder Lamar Hunt purchased it for $2.5 million at auction. At the time, it was the most expensive painting by an American artist. Hunt donated the painting to the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, Texas.
7. Icebergs and Wreck in Sunset by Frederic Edwin Church. Frederick Edwin Church painted various sketches during his expedition to the Arctic. He chartered a schooner, took a rowing boat to get as close as he could to the sea ice, and painted some one hundred sketches in pencil and oil paint.
8. Icebergs and Wreck in Sunset is one of these sketches, a study completed in 1860 in oil on paperboard. Kennedy Galleries in New York City holds the study, which measures just 8 x 12 inches and is very small.

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