Friday, May 2, 2008

artist of the day---frederick church


This painting is called the Heart of the Andes by Church. It is one of my all time favorite masterpieces and when it was painted it was the talk of town and drew crowds of thousands to simply view it. This is on permanent display at The Met and is worth the trip alone just to view, it is a huge painting about 10 foot long and 5 feet high as I can remember. Church built a great house on the Hudson river called Olana (which I went to visit years.) ago.

here is some info.o nthe artist-- the rest you can google yourselves...

Frederic Edwin Church (May 4, 1826April 7, 1900) was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters. While committed to the natural sciences, he was "always concerned with including a spiritual dimension in his works".[1]

The wealth of Church's father allowed him to pursue his interest in art from a very early age. At eighteen years of age, Church became the pupil of Thomas Cole in Catskill, New York after Daniel Wadsworth, a family neighbor and founder of the Wadsworth Atheneum, intoduced the two. In May of 1848, Church was elected as the youngest Associate of the National Academy of Design and was promoted to Academician the following year. Soon after, he sold his first major work to Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum.

Church settled in New York where he taught his first pupil, William James Stillman. From the spring to autumn each year Church would travel, often by foot, sketching. He returned each winter to paint and to sell his work.



here is

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