Glorious country : how the artist Frederic Church brought the world to America and America to the world / Victoria Johnson.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the author of American Eden --finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and more--comes a sweeping, richly researched biography of Frederic Church, the great 19th-century American artist whose stunning paintings of remote lands and seas thrilled American audiences and put the young republic on the map of world culture--published on Church's bicentennial.

"They came to see the world."

New York, spring 1859. Outside Frederic Church's Tenth Street studio, men and women amassed by the thousands hoping for a glimpse of his magnificent Heart of the Andes : a painting whose sublime, 'near supernatural' rendering of the vast Andean landscape encountered on the artist's recent travels introduced thousands of Americans to the fierce, majestic beauty of the far-flung wildernesses of the globe.

Frederic Church brought the world to America, and America into the world. Cementing the United States as a cultural and artistic force a full century before America's Abstract Impressionists rose to prominence, Church's bold paintings composed odes in color, shadow, and light to natural places near and far: the lush jungles of South America and immense icebergs of Newfoundland where he journeyed as a young man; the Syrian deserts and ancient, ruined cities where he and his wife traveled following the devastating loss of their two young children; the verdant, luminous valley around the Hudson where Church first studied painting and where he returned and established his estate, Olana, whose landscape itself became a work of art. Deeply influenced by the work of Alexander von Humboldt, Church conjured a vision of the natural world as a place of communion with creation.

Church charted, across the latter half of the 19th century, a career that both inhabited and gave shape to the artistic, cultural, and political crosscurrents of his day. Through a close examination of Church's letters, sketches, paintings, and diaries, and traveling in Church's footsteps to Egypt, the Andes, Petra, Jamaica, and Jerusalem, Johnson traces the path not only of one man's life, but of a country swept up in an era of vast and vertiginous change. Church worked and lived in New York in the city's formative years. He was a founder of its first great museum, the Met, and in paintings, not in words, he conveyed his passion for the exquisite natural beauty of the United States, but also for a Union free of slavery. He gave Americans visions of the majesty of their own new country and of the wonders of worlds only to be seen in paintings by this astonishing adventurer and artist. Church was a master artist and innovator, turning landscape painting into a portrait of a nation, and in the process, putting American art on the map of the world. Glorious Country is a book, Johnson writes, "about how we see and what we save."

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Historian and National Book Award finalist Johnson (American Eden) offers a superb biography of pioneering 19th-century landscape painter Frederic Church. Born in Hartford, Conn., in 1826, Church was 18 when he began apprenticing with landscape painter Thomas Cole, mastering "the many species of light that flourished around him" and developing an intense, dramatic style that stood out from the "bucolic, peaceful" paintings of his American peers. He soon rose to prominence in New York and Europe, challenging assumptions about the inferiority of American art. Drawing from Church's letters, diaries, and artwork, the author documents his travels to such places as New Grenada (present-day Colombia), his views on nature as central to national identity and humanity, and his personal life, including the deaths of two of his children just days apart. Throughout, Johnson astutely analyzes how Church used nature to imagine and critique the nascent nation's identity, celebrating American self-determination in Charter Oak, channeling the anxiety of a country on the brink of civil war in the "vertiginous" Niagara Falls, and subtly calling for unity with The Heart of the Andes, which depicts "frigid snowcapped peaks" (symbolizing the North) alongside "lush tropical lowlands" (symbolizing the South). It's a vivid, transformational portrait of an artist who chronicled a nation in flux. (May)

Kirkus Book Review

Portrait of a major American artist. Historian Johnson draws on a trove of archival sources and images to create an engrossing, empathetic, and comprehensive life of painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900). Roundly acclaimed in his own time for his meticulously rendered landscapes, Church, Johnson asserts, "did more than any other painter to usher the young United States onto the world cultural stage." From age 10, he knew he would be an artist; at 15, he became a drawing instructor in his own school. At 18, he left his home in Hartford, Connecticut, to paint in the Catskills--then treacherous terrain-- where he studied with Thomas Cole. Impressed with his skills, Cole arranged to have two paintings displayed at the National Academy of Design in New York, thereby launching the young man's career. Although Church has too easily been associated with Hudson River painters, Johnson portrays his vision as far more expansive, shaped by an urbane perspective on the nation's considerable social and political turmoil (the Civil War, not least). "He loved the United States with a robust patriotism but had a profoundly open and cosmopolitan mind," she writes. His deep curiosity and a tireless sense of adventure fueled many rigorous journeys. He made two months-long trips to South America, where he followed the perilous route taken by Alexander von Humboldt. His paintingThe Heart of the Andes (1859) proved a major cultural event when it was displayed in New York; Queen Victoria was given a private showing. He sailed in the Labrador Sea to paint icebergs, and he and his wife, Isabel, spent almost two years traveling around the Middle East. Johnson, intrepidly, retraced his steps at home and abroad, experiences that enliven her narrative with vibrant details. An impressive, beautifully written work of scholarship. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.