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Frederic Church, the "American Humboldt"
Frederic Church was considered the leading American landscape painter during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. He was familiar with Humboldt's writings from the beginning of his career. Every work of art Church produced, every voyage he undertook, was inflected by Humboldt's ideas. He embraced Humboldt's advice to artists to make extensive sketches from nature, and to rely on a combination of direct scientific observation and aesthetic appreciation in composing a landscape painting. Though Church and Humboldt never met or corresponded directly, Church used Humboldt's books as inspiration and fashioned Humboldt as an absent mentor.
In 1853 and again in 1857, Church traveled to South America, following parts of Humboldt's itinerary and using his book, Views of the Cordilleras, as a guide. At the peak of Church's career, one critic called him "the very painter Humboldt so longs for in his writings." Humboldt's ideas permeated the painter's way of envisioning the world, which was based on an intensive study of the physical properties of nature, from clouds and water to rocks and trees. Church absorbed Humboldt's ethos: observe the world, collect impressions, and connect the dots among nature's various aspects. The American painter invested each of his paintings with a scientist's eye for accuracy and an artist's eye for emotional impact. In doing so, Church pushed landscape painting to even greater prominence as the genre most capable of conveying America's cultural ambitions. |