Frederic Church

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Frederic Church 1826-1900 was the son of a wealthy businessman from Hartford Connecticut. He became Thomas Coles only student for two years. Frederick Church and his fellow artists from the 10th st. Studio became the second generation of the Hudson River school, referred to as the luminist painters..

This is the 10th street studios in New York where most of the Hudson River school worked in the winter. In the summer they traveled to New Hampshire and up the Hudson and eventually to the west in search of material from which to build their paintings in the studio.

Church perfected a style of tight landscape that was dramatic, fabulously detailed botanically accurate.Below is his masterpiece Heart of the Andes. After traveling to South America, Church painted this five foot high by ten foot long view and exhibited it in a frame with curtains that was intended to give the effect of looking out a window. He lit the picture and sourounded it with appropriate tropical plants he had brought back with him from the Andes.

The painting, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art amazed the New York of 1859. It was common in that era for artists tom rent a hall and display an enormous painting or diorama of scenery and charge the public admission to see it.Church made several trips to south America here is another of the giant South American canvases, Cotopaxi.

Church traveled to the Mediterranean and the Middle East in search of subjects and then to England to examine the art of Turner. Here is his painting of the Parthenon. It may not look like a show stopper in this tiny photo, but in real life this painting is astounding, I have stood before it bewildered and entranced.

Above is one of his new England images, a sunset in the White mountains.


Late in life, Rheumatism made it harder for him to paint and he turned his attention to building a Moorish palace of his own design called Olana. The house overlooking the Hudson, is preserved and open to the public.

Here are a couple of pictures from the Cape Cod workshop.

A half dozen students and I painted on the beaches of Cape Cod in PERFECT weather . I everyone enjoyed it, I certainly did. In the mornings I did a demo and then in the afternoon I ran from easel to easel doing individual critiques. I had a great group of students and we worked real hard.

The September workshop is starting to fill. It will be in the hills of New Hampshire on September 19,20 and 21. You can sign up here.