CHURCH, PAINTER OF NOBLE SCENERY
Metropolitan Museum of Art
THE ÆGEAN SEA, BY F. E. CHURCH
The best known of these followers was F. E. Church, who was a pupil of Cole—and the only pupil that he could properly be said to have had; for Church lived and studied in his house for years. While he showed no desire to imitate the mystic subjects of his master, Church cared little for the common world immediately around him. He seems to have thought that the nobler the subject the nobler the picture, and he ransacked the whole earth for its beautiful, strange, or impressive scenes. The luxurious vegetation of the tropics, the isles of the Ægean Sea, the Parthenon, icebergs, volcanos,—he painted them all, set off by sunset, clouds, thunderstorms, rainbows, or whatever else would enhance their beauty, and he painted them well. He was the best artist of his school; much better than Cole, whose careful studies of real scenes are often well done, but whose workmanship degenerated rapidly when, leaving nature, he entered into the realm of pure imagination.
The succeeding men who took Church’s viewpoint and sought subjects for their exceptional beauty or majesty had an additional impulse given to their imagination by the discovery of such subjects in their own country. Church painted no important picture of his own land; but when exploring parties began to enter the great West they were accompanied by artists eager to set down marvels no less striking than those of the tropics or of Europe.