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| Frederic Edwin Church Study for Apotheosis to Thomas Cole ca. 1847 oil on paper Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
"Frederic Edwin Church was perhaps the best-known representative of the Hudson River School of landscape painting as well as one of its most traveled. Born in Hartford in 1826, he was the privileged son of Joseph Church, a jeweler and banker of that city, who interceded with Connecticut scion and collector Daniel Wadsworth to persuade the landscape painter Thomas Cole to accept his son as a pupil. From 1844 to 1846 Church studied with Cole in his Catskill, New York studio and accompanied him on sketching sojourns in the Catskill Mountains and the Berkshires of Massachusetts. At one point, the master characterized the student as having "the finest eye for drawing in the world." Following his term with Cole, Church established a studio in New York City and quickly seized a reputation, less for the allegorical landscapes that had distinguished Cole's output, than for expansive New York and New England views that synthesized sketches of varying locales into vivid compositions."
– from an essay by Kevin J. Avery on the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History at the Metropolitan Museum
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| Frederic Edwin Church Cloud Study ca. 1860-70 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Woodland Study 1865 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Moonlight, Church's Farm ca. 1865 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Alpine Lake 1868 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Imaginary South American Landscape ca. 1853-55 oil on paper Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Botanical Study ca. 1865-66 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Pitajaya Fruit, Colombia 1853 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Palm Trees, Jamaica 1865 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Butterfly over Water ca. 1865 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Parthenon at Night 1869 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Broken Column of the Parthenon 1869 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Classical Ruins, Syria 1868 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Frederic Edwin Church Sculpture in the Theater of Dionysus, Athens 1869 oil on cardboard Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |