Art Appreciation Lecture Series 2015 Meet the Masters: Highlights from the Scottish National Gallery

Frederic Edwin Church: Niagara Falls from the American Side

John McDonald

16-17 September 2015

Lecture summary:

The life and work of , the most acclaimed American landscape painter of the 19th century. Church was the man who put American painting on the map in London and the Continent, He was an inveterate traveller who visited South America and the Middle East, and one of the supreme recorders of the American wilderness. This lecture tracks Church’s stellar career, and his relationship with Niagara Falls, the premiere tourist attraction in the United States.

Slide list:

1. Matthew Brady, Frederic Edwin Church, Library of Congress, Washington DC 2. Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara Falls from the American Side, 1867, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Scotland 3. Anon., , 1845, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC 4. Thomas Cole, A Tornado in the Wilderness, 1835, oil on canvas, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 5. Frederic Edwin Church, Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness in 1636 from Plymouth to Hartford, 1845, oil on canvas, , Hartford, CT. 6. Frederic Edwin Church, To the Memory of Cole, 1848, oil on canvas, Private Collection 7. Frederic Edwin Church, West Rock, New Haven, 1849, oil on canvas, New Britain Museum of American Art, CT. 8. Frederic Edwin Church, Above the Clouds at Sunrise, 1849, oil on canvas, The Westervelt-Warner Museum of American Art, Tuscaloosa, AL. 9. Joseph Stieler, , 1843, oil on canvas, Schloss Charlottenhof, Potsdam 10. Frederic Edwin Church, The Falls of Tequendama, Near Bogota, New Granada, 1854, oil on canvas, Cincinnati Art Museum, OH 11. Frederic Edwin Church, , 1855, oil on canvas, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC. 12. Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara, 1857, oil on canvas, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC,

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13. Frederic Edwin Church, , 1859, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 14. Frederic Edwin Church, Icebergs, 1861, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, TX 15. Frederic Edwin Church, Our Banner in the Sky, 1851, oil on canvas, Private Collection 16. Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness, 1860, oil on canvas, Cleveland Museum of Art, OH 17. Frederic Edwin Church, , 1862, oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts, MI. 18. Frederic Edwin Church, , 1864, oil on canvas, The Huntington Library, CAL. 19. Frederic Edwin Church, Aurora Borealis, 1865, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. 20. Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara Falls from the American Side, 1869, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Scotland 21. Frederic Edwin Church, , 1871, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

Reference:

Books or articles you have used in writing your lecture or that might be of interest to the audience.

John K. Howat, Frederic Church, Yale U.P. New Haven. 2005 Pierre Berton, Niagara: A History of the Falls, McClelland & Stewart, 1993 Robert Hughes, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America, Thames and Hudson, 1997 Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875, Oxford UP, 1980 Elizabeth Johns, et al, New Worlds From Old: 19th Century Australian & American Landscapes, National Gallery of Australia, 1998

For access to all past lecture notes visit: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/members/current-members/member-events/meet-the-masters/