Frederic Church: A Painter's Pilgrimage

by Kenneth John Myers, Kevin J. Avery, Gerald L. Carr, Mercedes Volait

Overview

A beautiful overview of fascinating paintings of the classical world and the Holy Land by a beloved American artist 

Frederic Church (1826–1900), one of the leading painters of 19th-century America and the Hudson River School, also journeyed around the globe to find fresh inspiration for his highly detailed compositions. Among Church’s lesser-known masterpieces are his paintings of the Middle East, Italy, and Greece, produced in the late 1860s through late 1870s, which explore themes of human history and achievement.
 
Taking a closer look at this geographical and thematic shift in Church’s practice, this handsome book brings together the artist’s major paintings of Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, and the surrounding region. The essays concentrate on a set of six major paintings of architectural and archaeological marvels; one essay also spotlights Olana, Church’s home in New York State, which reflects the influence of Middle Eastern design. This impressive volume stands apart in its new approach to the artist’s work and its quest to determine why and how this quintessentially American figure was drawn to scenery and themes from the other side of the globe.


Distributed for the Detroit Institute of Arts

Exhibition Schedule:

Detroit Institute of Arts
(10/22/17–01/15/18)

Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC
(02/08/18–05/13/18)

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
(06/03/18–08/26/18)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300218435
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	10/24/2017
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	11.00(w) x 10.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kenneth J. Myers is curator of American art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Kevin J. Avery is senior research scholar at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gerald L. Carr is an independent scholar. Mercedes Volait is a senior researcher at CNRS and director of the research center InVisu at Institut national d’histoire de l’art.
 

Editorial Reviews

04/01/2018
Frederic Church's work was popular from the mid 1850s to the early 1870s, after which the general taste switched from the realistic rendering of a location to capturing the artist's experience of a place. In 1867, Church traveled to Europe and the eastern Mediterranean and turned away from realistically representing nature to representing the rise and fall of civilizations. This catalog accompanies an exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), which celebrates the first major 19th-century painting acquired by the DIA, Church's Syria by the Sea (1874). DIA curator Myers, with other scholars and researchers, offers very readable chapters on the travels of Church and his family, as they journeyed to Paris, Marseilles, Alexandria, Beirut, and elsewhere. The catalog begins with a brief discussion of Church's work in the United States, followed by chapters covering his work in Jerusalem, Petra, and Greece. The final section presents Olana, Church's Persian-style estate overlooking New York's Hudson River. VERDICT This lavishly illustrated and well-researched catalog will intrigue artists, art historians, art history students, and interested general readers.—Nancy J. Mactague, formerly Aurora Univ. Lib., IL

Library Journal