Cross in the Wilderness

landscape

This painting depicts a wild and desolate landscape developed around the central motif of the painting, the cross, which, though placed in a central position, is overshadowed and passes almost unnoticed among the grandeur of the natural setting.

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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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