The Heart of the Andes

1859 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

landscape

Frederic Church was Thomas Cole's star pupil, and as Cole was the major figure in the first generation of the Hudson River School, so Church dominated the second. He did not confine himself to views of New York and New England; in the 1850s, influenced by the great explorer Alexander von Humboldt, he traveled to South America and made sketches that were the basis of a great Andean panorama. Church painted nature with uncanny fidelity and an abiding sense of awe.

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About the Artist

Frederic Edwin Church

1826 – 1900

American landscape painter. He was a pupil and close friend of Cole and continued the preoccupations of the Hudson River School with the most spectacular aspects of natural scenery. Church looked and travelled beyond his native country, however, painting not only the Niagara Falls, for example, but also the tropical forests of South America, icebergs, and exploding volcanoes, often on a huge scale. He was immensely popular in his day, and after a period of neglect is returing to favour again. His house, Olana, on the Hudson River, is now a museum.

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