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.

Frederic Church: A Painter's Pilgrimage

Arts & Photography

Carr, Gerald L.

Avery, Kevin J.

Myers, Kenneth John

Volait, Mercedes

History & Criticism

Detroit Institute of Arts

This is the largest project thus far undertaken on Frederic Edwin Church: a comprehensive scholarly catalogue of his works of art still at Olana State Historical Site, his former home in upstate New York. Divided into sixteen chronological sections, it covers 736 drawings, paintings, and prints, spanning nearly sixty years of his life. The items, each of them illustrated in the catalogue, range from doodles in his schoolboy textbooks and exercise books, to student works done under Thomas Cole, to important studio paintings exhibited during Church's lifetime, and pencil sketches and finished paintings executed in Mexico as late as two years before his death in April 1900. The holdings are most concentrated at the beginning of Church's career, between 1844 and 1850, and toward the end, between 1880 and 1898, but all phases of his travels and his art are represented, including preparations for his major studio paintings.

Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonné of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site

Individual Artists

Cambridge University Press

Olana Landscapes: The World of Frederic E. Church

Pomegranate

Traces the early development of the American artist's career as a landscape painter and analyzes his paintings

The Early Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, 1845-1854 (Anne Burnett Tandy Lectures in American Civilization)

Kelly, Franklin

Amon Carter Museum of Western Art

Church, Frederick Edwin

Architecture

Univ of Texas Pr

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) took his first trip West early in 1859 with Frederic Lander. He was chosen to be a civilian artist on a government expedition which set out to improve the wagon roads of the South Pass from Fort Kearny to the eastern border of California. By the middle of the year, Bierstadt was following the same steps taken by Alfred Jacob Miller twenty-two years earlier, on the Oregon Trail. Along the way he met and sketched thousands of discouraged gold seekers and immigrants. In late summer he returned east and began turning his sketches into huge canvases. Included among some of these earlier scenes were Chimney Rock, Fort Laramie and Laramie Park. Bierstadt's second trip, this time to the far West, took place in 1863. He traveled with his friend Fitz Ludlow. They spent several weeks in Yosemite Valley beyond the Sierra Nevada, eventually traveling up into Oregon. By 1864, scarcely five years after painting his first Rocky Mountain picture, Bierstadt was the most highly acclaimed American painter, rivaling even Frederick Church. As an artist, Bierstadt was concerned more with communicating his image of the West to the American public than with following changing styles in the art world. For him, the immensity of the Rocky Mountains could find appropriate expression only on large canvases. Despite their size, and the immensity of terrain represented, he also managed to include a lavish amount of detail, particularly in his foregrounds. As a consequence, he was often criticized in later years for overstatement, for combining several paintings into one canvas, sometimes from different perspectives. When he did not lose sight of the whole in his efforts to combine large vistas and accurate amounts of detail, the impact of his work could be universalizing.

Bierstadt's West

Gerald Peters Gallery

Published to accompany a major exhibition of notable landscapes and seascapes by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), this catalogue offers a rich sampling of the artist's five decades of creative production.Reproduced here in full color, the works constitute a veritable travelogue of the places Church visited over the course of his illustrious career, including much of New York State and New England, Labrador, Central and South America, Greece, Turkey, and the Holy Land.

Frederic Edwin Church: Romantic Landscapes and Seascapes

Adelson Galleries

The latest book from a renowned Church expert.

In Search of the Promised Land: Paintings by Frederic Edwin Church

Univ Pr of New England

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Carr, Gerald L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Carr, Gerald L.