Friday, December 08, 2006

"Twilight in the Wilderness" by Frederic Edwin Church

"Some paintings seem to bear their nationality on their faces. Church's Twilight in the Wilderness could only, I feel, be American. Church specialized in works inspired by the sheer vastness of the American continent. He went to South America, and painted the Andes; he traveled north, and gloried in the Niagara Falls; and he moved on to the huge silences of the icebergs. He held one-painting shows of these immense canvases, which people flocked to see, encountering these marvels of nature for the first time. Here, he painted the east coast: his own Maine."

"Twilight in the Wilderness"
1860
Oil on canvas
40 x 64 in. (101.6 x 162.6 cm)
The Cleveland Museum of Art

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