Paisagem da América do Sul (South American Landscape) - Frederic Edwin Church
América do Sul
Coleção privada
OST - 40x61 - 1857
In seeking to
understand the monumental achievement that was Frederic Church’s body of work
depicting the Americas, which were revered the world over, one must consider
the profound influences that instructed his artistic prowess and spiritual
inclinations toward the natural word. It was Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson
River School movement, who mentored the young artists from 1844-46 and can be
credited with teaching Church a foundation of the artistic principles of
American landscape painting. Moreover, it was Alexander von Humboldt who
inspired Church’s devotion to Naturalism.
As a prominent
theorist and artist during the period, Humboldt exposed the world to the
wonders of the American tropics through his renowned publication Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of
the Universe. Through his accomplished body of work, Church appears
to embody Humboldt’s philosophy that dictates “Landscape painting, though not
simply an imitative art, has a more material origin and a more earthly
limitation. It requires for its development a large number of various and direct
impressions which, when received from external contemplation must be fertilized
by the powers of the mind, in order to be given back to the sense as a fine
work of art. The grander style of heroic painting is the combined result of a
profound appreciation of nature and of this inward process of the mind.”
(Alexander von Humboldt as quoted in Eleanor Jones Harvey, Frederic Church’s Olana On the Hudson, New
York, 2018, pp. 94-95)
In these
encyclopedic volumes Humboldt sought to inspire the artistic exploration of
territories outside of the historically European survey. No artist of the
period appears to have embodied Humboldt’s doctrine as whole heartedly as
Church, in reading the following passage from Cosmos, Church’s ambitions come to focus: “Are we
not justified in hoping that landscape painting will flourish with a new and
hitherto unknown brilliancy, when artists of merit shall more frequently pass
the narrow limits on the Mediterranean, and when they shall be enabled far in
the interior of continents, in humid mountain valleys of the tropical world, to
size, with the genuine freshness of a pure and youthful spirit, on the true
image of the varied forms of nature?” (Alexander von Humboldt as quoted in
David C. Huntington, The
Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church: Vision of an American Era, New
York, 1966, p. 42)
Church
consumed Humboldt’s writings about the South American continent, combing over
its pages of maps, scenic engravings and detailed travel itineraries as he
prepared for his own sabbatical to the region. Church completed two trips to
Ecuador as part of his sweeping exploration of South America, the first in 1853
and again in 1857. Departing from New York City in April of 1853, he chose a
companion for the journey, friend and fellow landscape painter Cyrus West
Field, arriving in Colombia later that month. Following an arduous journey
later that summer the two crossed the border from Colombia into Ecuador,
recording in his travel diary, “After a disagreeable journey across an elevated
plain with a cold piercing wind and a sprinkling of rain we finally came to the
edge of an eminence which overlooked the valley of Chota. And a view of such
unparalleled magnificence presented itself that I must pronounce it one of the
great wonders of Nature. I made a couple of feeble sketches this evening in
recollection of the scene. My ideal of the Cordilleras is realized.” (as quoted
in David C. Huntington, The
Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church: Vision of an American Era, New
York, 1966, p. 43) It was then that Church took his first glimpse of Cotopaxi,
committing the monument to memory in his sketchbook.
According to
Katharine Manthorne, the present work most closely relates to a similar canvas
at the Art Institute of Chicago, entitled View of Cotopaxi. Likely executed from sketches
produced during his first trip to Ecuador in 1853, Manthorne confirms that both
the Museum’s painting and the present work, South American Landscape, can be dated prior to
Church’s second trip to Ecuador, in the early months of 1857. (Katharine
Manthorne, Creation & Renewal: Views
of Cotopaxi by Frederic Edwin Church, Washington, D.C., 1985, p.
71) Both paintings are categorized by the momentous Cotopaxi volcano which
looms large in the distance of the composition at far left. A geological
phenomenon in the nineteenth century during the age of
exploration, Cotopaxi gained its status as the highest active volcano to
mark the Andes mountains of Ecuador at a soaring 20,000 feet above sea level.
In
Church’s South American
Landscape, Cotopaxi’s peak is seen billowing with smoke in the
distance. The active volcanos that protruded the Ecuadorian landscape
enthralled Church and is further confirmed by how well documented they remain
in his site drawings and journals from this 1857 excursion. It was during his
second tour of Ecuador that Church observed the eruption of a similar peak, the
Sangay volcano. His sketches documented the event from approximately twenty
miles west of the volcano and his diary described the explosions which occurred
at forty-five minute intervals, producing a “black and somber eruption cloud
that piled up in huge, rounded forms cut sharply against the dazzling white of
the column of vapor and poling up higher and higher, gradually was diffused
into a yellowish tinted smoke through which would burst enormous heads of black
smoke which kept expanding, the whole gigantic mass gradually settling down
over the observer in a way that was appalling.” (as quoted in Richard S. Fiske
and Elizabeth Nielsen, Creation
& Renewal: Views of Cotopaxi by Frederic Edwin Church,
Washington, D.C., 1985, p. 2)
Church made
some accommodations in constructing the ideal landscape, as evidenced by the
present work, incorporating expansive mountain terrain which meets lush
vegetation and rising palms. This confluence characterized Church’s South
American pictures and pleased the patrons that poured over his tropical
landscapes. (ibid, p. 20) Manthorne went on to conclude: “This Wölfflinian
progression, recapitulating within his work the development of landscape art
from the more linear and topographical to the more painterly passage from the
example of Cole—his earliest master whose influence marked the first decade of
Church’s career—through the guidance of Humboldt and Ruskin, to Turner, who
helped him to achieve his artistic maturity. Intersecting nearly every critical
influence that informed his work, the evolving visions of Cotopaxi trace
Church’s development as an artist.”
The present
work is a hallmark among Church’s most triumphant naturalistic paintings,
exacting in scientific detail each canvas serves as a visual documentary of
Church’s own awesome regard for the region. South American Landscape is an important canvas,
preceding acclaimed works such as the colossal canvas Heart of the Andes, in the
collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, realized after his
return to the states in 1859, and his final soliloquy Cotopaxi of 1862 at the Detroit
Institute of Arts, Michigan. It is within these landscapes, which layer Andean
vistas so diverse in geographical detail and complete with open expanses
further dotted by haciendas and their inhabitants, that Church unites man with
nature’s formidable kingdom.
