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Niagara Falls

1857 · National Gallery of Art, Washington

landscape

Frederic Edwin Church was the most significant successor of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School. Church's landscapes represented unsullied nature as an embodiment of his faith in the God-given strength and mission of the New World, "America's sacred destiny," as he put it. An example is Niagara Falls, an icon of American painting.

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Niagara Falls

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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