Church, Frederick

Frederic Church

Treasures from Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church

"The wide variety of selections from Frederic Edwin Church’s collection of his own paintings shows the master in all phases of his career, in sketches and finished paintings, depicting the breadth of his subjects and the high technical skills that established him as an eminent and influential artist in his own time. As works he held on to or reacquired and kept in his house during his lifetime, they embody the heart of his artistic vision and convey a deeply personal slant. As pictures he hung and lived with at Olana, they tell the larger story of that extraordinary place and are as illuminating when seen in context as on their own."—from the Introduction

Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) traveled the world, captured its beauty in countless paintings, and brought it home to live at Olana, his castle on the Hudson. The name was inspired by a reference Church found to a fortress or a treasury-storehouse in ancient Persia. This extraordinary selection of Church’s paintings from his collection at Olana puts the most cherished of his treasures on full display in a volume that includes eighty color plates.

ChurchÂ’s paintings, among the most acclaimed examples of art of the Hudson River School, are found in museums and private collections around the globe. However, Church kept some of his art close by during his lifetime. The rich collection that remains at Olana includes about seven hundred pieces, including notebooks, drawings, and oils, both sketches and completed canvases. They cover the full range of ChurchÂ’s career chronologically and thematically. The highlights from his personal collection are found in the touring exhibition that accompanies this book.

The introduction by John Wilmerding and a substantial essay by Kevin J. Avery place the work into the context of ChurchÂ’s life and travels and examine ChurchÂ’s influences and the public reception of his art. Throughout Treasures from Olana, they discuss how profoundly ChurchÂ’s hilltop home and the surrounding landscape inspired and informed his work. His paintings, in turn, illuminate Olana more than a century after his death.

The Olana Partnership, Hudson, N.Y., and New York StateÂ’s Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, Albany, N.Y., organized Treasures from Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church.

Frederic Church's Olana: Architecture and Landscape As Art

Beautiful four-color paintings and illustrations! Olana was the home of Frederic Church, a student of Thomas Cole and a major figure in the Hudson River School of landscape painting. Called by Church "the center of the world," Olana's Perrsian-style house and romantically-designed grounds are a "perfect Eden of picturesque beauty."

Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape (New Directions in American Art, No 4)

The Voyage of the Icebergs: Frederic Church's Arctic Masterpiece

Twelve days after the onset of the American Civil War in April of 1861, Frederic Edwin Church, the most successful American landscape painter of his day, debuted his latest "Great Picture" -- a painting titled The North. Despite favorable reviews, the painting failed to find a buyer. Faced with this unexpected setback, Church added a broken mast to the foreground and changed the work's title to The Icebergs. He then shipped the painting to London, where it was finally sold to an English railroad magnate and subsequently disappeared from view for 116 years.

This beautiful book tells the fascinating story of The Icebergs and provides a detailed look at the cycle of fame, neglect, and resuscitation of both this masterwork and Church's career. In 1979, The Icebergs sold at auction for $2.5 million, at the time the highest amount ever paid for an American painting. The sale coincided with an upswing in the popularity and acclaim accorded to American landscape painting, catalyzing the market for American art and contributing to a revival in the prestige of Church and the Hudson River School. Drawing on extensive interviews with many of the people involved with the painting's rediscovery, sale, and eventual donation to the Dallas Museum of Art, the author considers the way marketing has defined The Icebergs.

This book accompanies an exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art from September 8, 2002 until January 15, 2003.

Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs

Classroom use of the art print.: An article from: Arts & Activities

This digital document is an article from Arts & Activities, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2006. The length of the article is 1011 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Classroom use of the art print.
Publication: Arts & Activities (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 139 Issue: 2 Page: 28(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Oil Sketches by Frederic Edwin Church

In Search of the Promised Land: Paintings by Frederic Edwin Church

The latest book from a renowned Church expert.

Frederic E. Church: Under Changing Skies : Oil Sketches and Drawings from the Collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Museum of Design, Smithsoni