7th8th Anniversary Anniversary

Form & Function TheThe FFolkoolklk ArtArt CollectionCollection off JerryJ andd Susan Lauren

Celebrating ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: 20th-Century America Jewelry Shaker Design on Canvas Grandeur in Connecticut: Frederic Church An Americana Collection $6.95$6.95 US US/CAN Edward $8.95 CAN Potthast Early Colonial The Fourteenth Furniture Street School Minton Porcelain Americans Abroad Portrait Miniatures

C1_Adelson.indd C1 1/17/08 12:26:56 PM enhanced when several of his works achieved critical recognition in London and the approval of John Ruskin, who admired Church’s great 1857 canvas, Niagara (Fig. 1). Church retained his supremacy in American landscape painting until he settled in 1872 hen, in 1855, Frederic Edwin Church began into Olana, his ornate home outside of Hudson, New York, on to exhibitW his paintings of the South American landscape, based on which construction had begun in 1870. For the first few following his first voyage there two years earlier, he was quickly recognized as years, Church continued to produce masterworks, but by the late America’s greatest landscape painter, heir to that identification 1870s, his few major pictures, such as El Rio de Luz (Fig. 2) dis- achieved by his teacher, Thomas Cole. Church’s reputation was tinctly suggest a composite memory image, as do a series of smaller The Worlds of Frederic Edwin Church

by William Gerdts

paintings of the 1880s. His last significant picture, The Icebergs identified the Hudson River School, of which Church was one of (Fig. 3), is a small, somber reminiscence of his great The Icebergs the last, and surely the greatest master. (Fig. 4) painted three decades earlier. Church’s retreat from the By the time Church died in 1900, he had been all but forgotten, country’s art scene corresponded to the public’s preference for the and while The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mounted a French-derived Barbizon aesthetic of more generalized and poetic small show of his paintings less than two months after his death, landscapes over the carefully defined, expansive interpretation that Church’s great pictures were to go unappreciated for many decades. Church’s reputation was revived in the 1960s, first by the general Fig. 1: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), Niagara, 1857. Oil on canvas, 41˙ x 90˙ inches. Courtesy of Corcoran Gallery of Art, appreciation of mid-nineteenth century American painting that Washington, D.C. Museum purchase, Gallery Fund. 76.15. resulted from the formation and publication of the M. and M. Karolik collection of American paintings by the Fig. 2: Frederic Edwin Church (American, scientist, naturalist, and travel writer Alexander Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and, more 1826–1900), El Rio de Luz (The River of Light), von Humboldt, who challenged landscape 1877. Oil on canvas. 54˚ x 84Δ inches. specifically, through the efforts of the late art Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington, painters to depict the incredible variety of historian David C. Huntington, who com- D.C. Gift of the Avalon Foundation 1965.14.1. scenic beauty that he had discovered in his pleted his dissertation on Church at Yale travels there between 1794 and 1799. University in 1966 and subsequently became Church’s early American pictures partake of This became Church’s mandate. Though not instrumental in the renovation of Olana, now a the nationalism that was rampant in the mid- the first American artist to travel to South center for Church study and scholarship.1 At nineteenth century, as evident among the America — the Boston portraitist John Green- that time, Church was esteemed primarily for landscape painters — Church included — wood had gone to Surinam in 1752, and in Niagara and his South American landscapes of who later became known as the “Hudson River 1845, New York landscape painter Jacob Ward the later 1850s and early ‘60s. More recently, School” (originally a term of disparagement traveled extensively through the region2 — recognition has been awarded to the North coined when the works had gone out of favor). Church’s excursion there can be seen as a fur- American landscapes, both those painted In the late 1840s and the early ‘50s, this ther extolling of the romantic ideal of a pastoral immediately following his study with Cole, Connecticut-born painter kept very much to New World, this one even less contaminated by such as New England Landscape with Ruined New England, creating an amalgam of his European “civilization” than his own country. Chimney (Fig. 5), painted in 1846, which visual experiences on canvases that reflect the Church and his friend Cyrus Field left New repeats his teacher’s concern for the passage of optimistic belief in the harmony of man with York in April 1853 and traveled to Colombia, time and even adopts the oval format of a nature in pre-Civil War America. By 1852, arriving at the mouth the Magdalena River. His number of Cole’s domestic scenes of the 1840s, however, Church was determined to travel to letters home address the interesting nature of and more mature works of the early 1850s. South America, inspired by the writings of the the villages through which he passed and the THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM: Fig. 4: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), The Icebergs 1861. Oil on canvas, 64˙ x 112˙ inches. Courtesy of Dallas Museum of Art. Anonymous gift.

Fig. 3: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), The Iceberg, 1891. Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches. Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA. 72.2.3. natural scenery that he was sketching, and upon which he drew for later pictures such as the sev- eral versions of his View on the Magdalena River (Fig. 6), in which he introduces the single palm tree, his most consistent trope in his South American landscapes. Church and Field next visited Bogota, but their goal was Quito, Ecuador, which they reached on August 30, 1853. The high volcanic Andean peaks to the north and south of the over the tropical landscape. In these paintings Cayambe are among those shown — but on capital became the basis for Church’s most cele- Church presents a “new” New World, one the combination of vastness and variety of an brated South American landscapes. Cotopaxi, which stretches from the tropics to snow- almost other-worldly nature. the mountain singled out by Humboldt as the capped peaks, and sees nature in harmony with Church made a second visit to South highest, most beautiful, and also most dan- itself, the figures, and occasional buildings, America in 1857, this time only to Ecuador, gerous, particularly figured in Church’s shrines and cross-shaped grave markers. But accompanied by his fellow landscape painter, repertory when, back in New York, he began Church reached his first pinnacle of fame with and sometime emulator, Louis Remy Mignot. developing his South American sketches into his large and sublime The Andes of Ecuador On this trip, Church concentrated especially on finished paintings in 1855. In Cotopaxi (Fig. (Fig. 8), here concentrating not on a single oil studies of Chimborazo, which he later 7), the volcano, still active but benign, towers Andean peak — though Cotopaxi and worked up in his studio in the new Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. Church was one Eruption of Cotopaxi (Fig. 11). This later Fig. 6: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), of its first tenants, and it was in the large gallery view of Cotopaxi reverses the harmonious nat- View on the Magdalena River, 1857. there that his most celebrated South American ural interplay of his 1850s versions. Not Oil on canvas, 23ƒ x 36 inches. masterwork, The Heart of the Andes (Fig. 9) was surprisingly, this richly lit and high-colored yet Private collection. viewed by an ecstatic public. barren landscape of opposing natural forces South America ceased to be featured in has been interpreted as reflective of the visiting Jamaica in 1865 while recovering from Church’s oeuvre for the next few years, turmoil of the Civil War at home. the death of four of his children, two of whom returning in the artist’s explosive Cotopaxi Church made one more artistically signifi- had died in March of that year. The trip (Fig. 10) related to the smaller oil version, cant trip to Latin, if not South, America, resulted in his vast canvas The Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica (Fig. 12), a jungle scene in serious arthritic condition and general ill which a violent rain storm at the left seems to health yielded only some oil sketches. clear the landscape to lay out its beauty and In the late 1850s, Church’s exploration of infinite expanse. In subsequent years, as New World territories had also taken him to Church was drawn more to the Old World, Newfoundland and Labrador in the frozen South America functioned, not as a source of north, areas that had drawn explorers seeking discovery and inspiration, but of nostalgia, the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM: such as in his Tropical Scenery (Fig. 13), Pacific. Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated explorations Fig. 5: Frederic Edwin Church painted in 1873, many years after his visits to of 1847 brought the region to public — and (American, 1826–1900), New England Landscape with Ruined Chimney, 1846. South America, and lacking either specificity artistic — attention. In mid-1859, in the com- Oil on panel, 9© x 13¬ inches. Private collection. of form or geological identification. Humanity pany of Louis Legrand Noble, Church traveled has greater presence here, too, than in his ear- from Boston to Halifax and Sydney in Nova Fig. 9: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), lier tropical scenes, not only in the prominent Scotia, and on to St. John’s in Newfoundland, The Heart of the Andes, 1859. foreground figure, but in the small city set on and then still further north, to the southeastern Oil on canvas, 66Δ x 119© inches. 3 a distant plateau. A decade later, Church tip of Labrador. Church painted multiple Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bequest of Margaret E. Dows, 1909. 9.95. began almost annual visits to Mexico, but a studies of icebergs on this voyage for the pow- Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. erful Icebergs and Wreck in Sunset (Fig. 14), culminating in his immense masterwork, The Icebergs (Fig. 4). Both paintings, devoid of life except for the remains of wrecked vessels in the foreground, relics of a lost expedition, presented to the public a world previously unseen and a contrasting pendant to the tropical glories which had so firmly established his fame in the mid-fifties.4 Church had spanned, south to north, the New World. After the Civil War, Church looked to the Old World both for philosophic and artistic motivation, and it is difficult not to believe that he had lost faith in the glory and promise of the New World. Now he sought out monuments of past civilizations, replacing the natural wonders of the New World. In the late autumn of 1867, he set out for the Near East. He and his party set- tled in Beirut, from where Church explored the entire region, creating studies for two of his masterworks to be completed back in Olana: Jerusalem from The Mount of Olives (1870; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri) and El Khasné, Petra (Fig. 15). After an uninspiring summer in the Bavarian Alps, Church was in Athens in 1869. He wrote of “the wonderful ruins of the Acropolis,” and the revelation of the Parthenon, which he described as “certainly the culmination of the genius of man in architecture.”5 His studies made at the time (Fig. 16)

Fig. 7: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), Cotopaxi, 1855. Oil on canvas, 30 x 46⁷⁄₁₆ inches. Courtesy of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Museum purchase with funds provided by the Hogg Brothers Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg, by exchange. THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM: Fig. 10: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), Cotopaxi, 1862. Oil on canvas, 48 x 85 inches. Courtesy of Detroit Institute of Arts. Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund, Gibbs-Williams Fund, Dexter M. Ferry, Jr., Fund, Merrill Fund, Beatrice W. Rogers Fund, and Richard A. Manoogian Fund. Photograph © The Detroit Institute of Arts. Fig. 12: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica, 1867. Oil on canvas, 48⁵⁄₁₆ x 84¬ inches. Courtesy of Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Conn. Bequest of Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt. THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM: Fig. 11: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), Eruption at Cotopaxi, ca. 1865. Oil on canvas, 9⁹⁄₁₆ x 17 ¹⁄₁₆ inches. Private collection. Fig. 13: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), Tropical Scenery, 1873. Oil on canvas, 38¬ x 59⁵⁄₁₆ inches. The Brooklyn Museum, New York. Dick S. Ramsay Fund. THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM: Fig. 8: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), The Andes of Ecuador, 1855. Oil on canvas, 48 x 75 inches. Courtesy of Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC. Original purchase fund from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, ARCA Foundation, and Anne Cannon Forsyth. 1966.2.9. Fig. 14: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), Icebergs and Wreck in Sunset, ca. 1860. Oil on paperboard mounted on canvas, 8© x 12© inches. Private Collection. THIS PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM: Fig. 16: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), The Parthenon, ca. 1869–1870. Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 13 x 20 inches. Private Collection. Fig. 17: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900), The Parthenon, 1871. Oil on canvas, 44˙ x 72¬ inches. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bequest of Maria De Witt Jesup, from the collection of her husband, Morris K. Jesup, 1914 (15.30.67). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Fig. 18: Frederic Edwin Church (American, quality of his earlier work and often appear to 1. In addition to his dissertation, see Huntington’s two publications: Frederic Edwin Church. Exhibition cata- 1826–1900), The Aegean Sea, ca. 1877. be composite memory images. Church’s last Oil on canvas, 54 x 63© inches. logue, (Washington, D.C.: National Collection of Fine Arts, 1966) ; and The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. great Near Eastern canvas, The Aegean Sea Church: Vision of an American Era (New York: George Bequest of Mrs. William H. Osborn, 1902. (Fig. 18), is a composite view based on his Braziller, 1966). The leading Church scholars today are Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art experiences in the Holy Land, Lebanon, Syria, Franklin Kelly and Gerald L. Carr, the latter, a student of Huntington’s. See, for instance, Kelly, Frederic Edwin PREVIOUS PAGE: Greece, and Turkey, and bathed in Turneresque Church and the National Landscape (Washington, D.C.: Fig. 15: Frederic Edwin Church (American, light, a tribute to the artist whose work he had Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988, and Carr, Frederic 1826–1900), El Khasné, Petra, 1874. Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonné of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Oil on canvas, 60© x 50© inches. become familiar with in London in 1869. In Cambridge University Press, 1994). Kelly and Carr Courtesy of Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY. 1877, Church also created his last great South jointly wrote The Early Landscapes of Frederic Edwin New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, American image, El Rio de Luz (Fig. 2), again Church (Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum, 1988). and Historic Preservation. OL.1981.10. For a full biographical treatment of Church, see John K. more a memory image of past experiences. Howat, Frederic Church (New Haven:Yale University would lead to his great canvas The Parthenon The two pictures neatly encapsulate the Old Press, 2005). and the New Worlds of Church’s pictorial and 2. For American artists in Latin America (including South (Fig. 17) painted at Olana. and Central America and Mexico), see Katherine Emma Back in the United States at the end of June ideological anatomy. Manthorne, Tropic Renaissance: North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839–1879 (Washington and 1869, Church’s attention was directed toward Frederic Edwin Church: Romantic London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989). the construction of his fabled home, Olana, 3. Louis Legrand Noble wrote about his experiences in Landscapes and Seascapes will be on view at and his traveling days were essentially over. He After Icebergs with a Painter (New York: D. Appleton and Adelson Galleries in New York from January Company, 1861). continued to produce paintings based upon 18 through March 1, 2008. 4. The Icebergs has been the subject of two studies: Gerald his earlier journeys, some South American L. Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1980), and Eleanor Jones views and more Near Eastern ones, though, William H. Gerdts is professor emeritus Harvey, The Voyage of the Icebergs: Frederic Church’s Arctic perhaps due in part to his increasing arthritic of art history at the Graduate School Masterpiece (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002). 5. Church to William H. Osborn, April 14, 1869. condition, these have none of the crystalline of the City University of New York. Transcript in Olana State Historic Site. Frederic Edwin Church

ROMANTIC LANDSCAPES AND SEASCAPES

Syrian Landscape,  Oil on panel  ¼ x  ½ inches (Private Collection) January  - March , 

Fully illustrated color catalogue with essays by Gerald L. Carr, Ph.D., available for  (plus tax and shipping) from Crawford-Doyle Booksellers () - or [email protected] Adelson Galleries  East ⁿd Street New York, NY Mon - Fri :-: Sat - in association with Michael Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services