Frederic Edwin Church

born Hartford, Connecticut, 1826; died New York, New York, 1900

BiographyBorn into a wealthy Hartford, Connecticut, family in 1826, Frederic Edwin Church had a father with the connections to secure his son a place as Thomas Cole’s pupil in 1844. He studied with the famous Hudson River school painter for two years in Catskill, New York, before moving to New York City to start his career. Church found success easily and was known for his large-scale and highly detailed works. He traveled to South America in 1853 and again in 1857. His second trip produced one of the most famous paintings of the Civil War era, The Heart of the Andes. In 1859 Church sailed to the North Atlantic to sketch and paint icebergs and then changed subjects again when he traveled to Jamaica in 1865. After his time in the tropics Church made his way to the Old World in 1867, finding new inspiration in Jerusalem, Palestine, Athens, and Rome. He built his family a Persian-inspired castle he named Olana in Hudson, New York, in 1870 and lived there for the remainder of his life. Toward the end of his life, the exacting detail of Church’s work began to fall out of style and he became relatively obscure by the time of his death in 1900. Today, however, Church is recognized as one of the most significant American artists of the 19th century.

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