Hudson River painter Frederic Edwin Church’s love of exploration and discovery fueled extensive travel to remote landscapes around the world in the mid-nineteenth century. Taking inspiration from these travels, Church built his home Olana, in Hudson, NY in 1872, incorporating aesthetic elements from recent visits to the Middle East. The landscape design of the grounds at Olana are considered by some to be one of his greatest landscape compositions. Over his lifetime, Church visited and painted the landscapes of the Arctic, Mexico and South America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Europe. Like his teacher Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School, Church painted in the Romantic style with a focus on natural beauty in idealized landscapes. Church’s views were often expansive and majestic, tightly constructed with structural elements, tone and light. As Church matured, his compositions became more elaborate and often dramatic, with brilliant, colorful sunsets over the Hudson River, waterways in the Andes, and views in Jamaica. Early sketching trips in the Catskills, Maine and the White Mountains garnered Church a reputation as a traveler-artist, painting and drawing studies in nature before creating the final compositions in the studio.

In 1868, as part of an extended trip to Europe and the Middle East, Church travelled to Germany to visit the homeland of Prussian/German naturalist Alexander von Humbolt. Von Humbolt explored South America in the early 1800s and had inspired Church’s two trips to the region in 1853 and 1857. Church was very interested in Von Humbolt’s scholarly writing on the continent’s natural history, retracing Von Humbolt’s steps during his own visits to the region. His paintings from this period, in particular The Heart of the Andes, from 1859, brought the artist international recognition and fame. Hoping to share his work with the man who inspired his exploration of South America, Church wrote to his friend, the travel writer Bayard Taylor, explaining that he planned to send the painting to Berlin for Von Humbolt to see. Taylor wrote to Von Humboldt on Church’s behalf, but unfortunately, the world-renowned scientist never received it as he died before the letter’s arrival in Germany.

Frederic Church’s 1868 trip to Germany produced several paintings, including Rainbow Near Berchtesgaden and Obersee, both from 1868. While in the Bavarian Alps near the Austrian border, Church visited The Königssee, a natural lake in the southeastern part of Berchtesgadener. He sketched and painted several views of the dramatic landscape around the lake, including Königssee, Bavaria, from 1868. Königssee lake was also the subject of the later large-scale view from 1881 that STAIR will offer in The Fine Sale on April 24th.  Unlike the earlier composition, this view of the lake and environs is monumental and dramatic, depicting the striking rock walls that surround the lake, with Mount Watzmann’s east face in the distance. Differing from the archetypal Church landscape with large skies above the mountains, this composition brings the viewer into the lake with an almost aerial perspective. There is only a small section of sky, allowing for the water and rock walls to form the structure of the composition. Church’s cool treatment of light, detailed brushwork to create a sense of realism, and the flatness of the surface are Luminist in style. Church was not one of the primary American artists associated with Luminism, though his mature work uses many of the stylistic tools employed by Luminist painters in the mid-nineteenth century. Church also painted the Bavarian lake Eisbee in 1881 in a work titled View of Eisbee. Both paintings have the same provenance from the artist to William H. Osborn, Church’s friend and patron.