~GREGG HERTZLIEB~
FREDERIC
EDWIN CHURCH: MOUNTAIN
LANDSCAPE
Through
experience and careful seeing,
Church becomes a
force of
nature, allowing
his understanding of natural
contours and details
to guide his hand in representing organic
subjects.
Frederic Edwin Church, one
of the most important artists of the Hudson River School, is
represented in the Brauer Museum of Art’s collection by a small,
beautiful oil on canvas painting that Percy Sloan donated to Valparaiso
University in 1953. Sloan purchased the painting for his own
collection from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1950 and shortly after
donated it to VU, along with approximately four hundred other works of
art, many by his father Junius R. Sloan (1827-1900) who himself was a
Hudson River School painter and who was influenced and inspired by
Church’s skilled example. Today, the Brauer’s Church is one of
the museum’s most beloved pieces, impressing viewers with its luminous
treatment of its landscape subject.
Although resembling other paintings in the artist’s
body of work, Church’s Mountain
Landscape is a studio creation, where the artist relied on his
recollections of geographical details, primarily in southern Vermont
where the artist traveled in the mid 1800s, to compose the scene.
Such studio creations were common among Hudson River School painters
who, full of inspiration from the majestic American landscape and their
experiences and observations there, were moved to record their
sensations even when not in the direct presence of such grandeur.
Hudson River School works reflect the remarkable vastness of the
nineteenth century American landscape, unfolding in such a picturesque
manner that artists who sought to capture this spirit and scale thought
that the landscape must be a divine gift, with the presence of God seen
in, for example, the glowing skies and dynamic configurations of
mountains, valleys, and bodies of water.
This particular painting is difficult to photograph,
since dark tones and shaded areas in the actual work scintillate with
touches of applied color and passages of scumbled oil paint. The
glowing oranges in the sky and on the mountain face contrast with the
darkness in the clouds, leading the viewer to feel that evening
approaches as the sun lights the sky and land almost from within. The
painting seems to exude a rosy light that reaches out to the viewer as
he bends forward to examine the surface. The orange and rose
light does appear in photographic reproduction but does not seem to
have the depth, the complexity that one sees in the actual piece. A
small painting, lovingly created by an artist assured in his skill and
wishing to capture on a small scale the sense of heavenly light that
impressed him in the field, is a gesture of communication between the
insightful Church and viewers young and old who can marvel at the
treatment of light and visual textures.
In this studio creation, the artist capably
accomplishes a visual rhyme between the natural rhythms and patterns in
active brushwork and the surface textures of the various natural
elements. The writhing of the tree in the lower right, upon close
inspection, emerges from the free style of paint application.
Through experience and careful seeing, Church becomes a force of
nature, allowing his understanding of natural contours and details to
guide his hand in representing organic subjects. The Hudson River
Valley fills the artist’s heart and mind with inspiration, so that he
can transcribe all those elements of fascination, filtered through the
particular and unique characteristics of the medium he chooses to
use. The painting, then, becomes an object of devotion for the
faithful figures constituting this school or movement in art. To
perceive and appreciate is only part of the equation; to celebrate
through pictorial invention completes it so that viewers learn to see,
for example, the dramatically lit sky and think that perhaps something
greater than man inhabits and infuses this place, revealing Himself on
occasion in ways for which words seem inadequate.
Within this rich natural setting, a figure sits in a
boat on a lake. He is dwarfed by the enormity of his
surroundings. Perhaps the imaginary boater is overwhelmed or
afraid, set in such a vast space. Perhaps, though, he finds the
appearance of the land and sky to be striking. Perhaps the
painting becomes a portal or device of teleportation, where the artist
has enabled viewers, through their close viewing, to enter the picture
and become the tiny boater. Floating in this environment where paint
magically forms the textures of rocks, trees, and water, the viewer
realizes the magnitude of the beauty that surrounds him, and that is
available to him. An appreciation of this piece seems linked to a
feeling of thankfulness
for the artist’s sensitivity and skill, for the American landscape, and
for the Maker that speaks through Church and that drives his eye and
hand.
© by Gregg
Hertzlieb
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