Though European settlers had long taken over the land surrounding the Falls, Cole shows Native Americans standing on a cliff overlooking the roaring waters.Ĭhurch was influenced by Cole’s style, but by 1857, he had adopted a far more mathematical approach to depicting the environment. The latter conjures an atemporal, pseudo-Edenic state. To get this one exactly right, the artist journeyed to the Falls in 1856 to work on site.īut Church’s wider approach differentiated his painting from the many, many other depictions of the Falls in more than just the details. Compare Church’s Niagara to Distant View of Niagara Falls, an 1830 painting by Church’s mentor, Thomas Cole. Earlier paintings by Church had drawn criticism for an unrealistic depiction of water. Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.ĭespite the grandeur of the image, Church’s 1857 masterpiece was actually famed for its restraint and near-scientific attention to natural detail. Thomas Cole, Distant View of Niagara Falls (1830). So great was the public draw-and the monetary allure-of Niagara that when the recently opened Corcoran Gallery of Art acquired the painting in 1876 for $12,500, the institution was deemed to be a sure success. French academician Jean Léon Gérôme would refer to the painting as “las bas” (the foundation) of American artistic identity. Church would select Niagara to represent him at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where it won second prize. The painting was then sent on a tour of cities along the Eastern seaboard before heading to the UK that same year. It was shown in a darkened gallery in which only the painting was illuminated. In the exhibition’s several-week run, more than 100,000 people passed through, the painting becoming a rival to the Falls itself as an attraction.Ĭhurch’s merchandising acumen was second to none: admission also gave viewers the opportunity to purchase a print of the work, which cost $30 for an artist’s proof chromolithograph or $15 for a colorized print. In May 1857, when the painting was exhibited at the gallery of Williams, Stevens, and William, visitors were offered a glimpse of the painting for 25 cents. But it also represents the ambition and showmanship of urban commercial culture in the United States.Ī carnival-like hubbub accompanied the grand painting’s arrival in New York City. Niagara is a spectacle of raw, sublime nature. The Painting Was a Celebration of Nature-and Businessįrederic Edwin Church, circa 1855–1865. Here are three surprising facts about the painting that might make you see it in a whole new light. Another called the painting the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”įor Labor Day, we decided to take a closer look at Niagara. “Of the hundreds of paintings made of Niagara, before Church and after him, this is by common consent the greatest,” wrote the critic Pierre Berton. It cemented him as the most famous painter of the age in the United States. Niagara is one of Church’s most celebrated paintings-and perhaps his most important. But in the 1850s, he was drawn back north, and spent 1854 to 1856 extensively visiting Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and, of course, Niagara Falls. The only student of Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole, Church first made his name with luminous and exotic landscapes of South America. One depiction, however, captured the public’s imagination more than the others: Frederic Edwin Church’s Niagara (1857), a seven-foot-wide colossus that seemed to press viewers dizzyingly close to the waterfall’s precipice. The colossal cataract at the border of New York and Ontario was the single most frequently depicted landscape in the Americas from 1800 to 1860. He is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut.Niagara Falls has been called the American Mecca-a natural wonder and famed destination for honeymooners and daredevils alike. He turned his interest to the embellishment of his home, Olana, in Hudson, NY, now a museum in his memory.Ĭhurch died on April 7, 1900. By 1880 Church’s painting activity declined markedly. In 1876 he suffered from his first attack of “inflammatory rheumatism,” which led him to paint with his left hand. He was a founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and served with the institution from 1870 to 1887. His paintings were often extremely large, and they enthralled crowds with their realistic, technical virtuosity.Ĭhurch’s studio was in the 10th Street Studio Building in New York City from 1858 to 1887. In 1850, Church was also elected a member of the Century Association.Ĭhurch traveled from the arctic to the tropics making copious sketches in search of material for his elegant paintings. He became an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1849 and a full member the following year. He was soon proficient enough to begin exhibiting. In 1844, at the age of 18, Church became Thomas Cole’s only pupil.
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