Existing comment:
Frederic Edwin Church
Mount Chimborazo, Ecuador
1857
Mount Chimborazo, Ecuador
1857
Mount Chimborazo through Rising Mists and Clouds
1857
all oil and pencil on paperboard
These three studies of Chimborazo date from Church's second trip to South America in 1857. The artist spent four months studying what by that time was known as "Humboldt's mountain." When Humboldt climbed it in 1802 it was believed to be the world's tallest peak. Humboldt had ascended to 19,413 feet, a mountaineering record that stood for thirty years. Church, too, attempted to climb the mountain's lower slopes. He used these sketches to determine how to situate the snow-capped peak in another major homage to Humboldt, Heart of the Andes, which he completed in 1859. Church eventually used the sketch at lower left, with the low bank of clouds and rising moon, to compose his painting of Cayambe, on view to the right.
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Gift of Louis P. Church, 1917-4-1296b, -824, -1296a |