Frederick Edwin Church
American, 1826-1900

Moonrise in Greece, 1889
oil on canvas
14 1/8 x 20 1/4 in.

SBMA, Gift of Mrs. Lockwood de Forest
1966.1



Photo of Frederick E. Church dating between 1855 and 1865 from the Library of Congress.

“Imagine this fairy like Temple blazing like sunlight among those savage black rocks.”
Frederic Edwin Church

RESEARCH PAPER

Provenance: During all of the 77 years between its painting and arrival at SBMA, Moonrise in Greece was in two private houses: that of the artist and of Mr. and Mrs. Lockwood de Forest, Sr. (New York City and Santa Barbara and parents-in-law of the donor). Lockwood de Forest, Sr., was not only related to Frederic Edwin Church's wife, but he was the artist's protégé. When he was 18 (in 1889), de Forest accompanied the 43 year-old Church to Greece. There the young aid helped the artist to make numerous detailed notes, color sketches and to take photographs (black/white as color photography was not in use until early in the 20th century). All these--the notes, sketches, photographs--were used by Church as supportive aids when he painted this oil in his studio twenty years after the Grecian visit.

Was Moonrise in Greece purposely painted as a present for Lockwood de Forest, Sr.? We do not know. The fact that this painting is not listed in existing records found to date leads one to suppose it was painted in 1889 as a gift. We do know de Forest, Sr., remained close to Church throughout the artist's life and shared his belief that, "the Greeks gave a large and Godlike air to all they did."

Exhibition History: None prior to 1967 when, on a short-term loan, to the Art Department of the University of California at Riverside used the painting in comprehensive examinations to candidates of Master's Degree in Art History.

Description of Moonrise in Greece: The locale of dramatic classical antiquity contrasts with the artist's controlled palette and restrained brushwork, revealing the great talents of Frederic Edwin Church (hereafter will sometimes be identified as FEC): painstaking preparation and scholarly knowledge of the scene's subject; technical skill; an innately aesthetic sense for color, harmony and balance; a masterful portrayal of atmospheric influence on sky, sea and earth. Here, the moon rises above Grecian waters as the setting sun descends behind the mountains (mostly out of view to the left) and its last rays cast their luminous lights on ancient Corinthian columns. The skies accurately reflect what is happening in the celestial realm: an intermingling of the day's and night's colors, not a precise, abrupt change of the color-guard but as if the hues and shadows were enjoying an informal social hour before departing. The lower foreground of stones and architectural fragments is already cast in the enveloping darkness. This landscape is interpreted with spiritual significance, as we, who seem to be actual witnesses, respond with a serene feeling of poetic dignity. As Moonrise in Greece was painted in 1889, undoubtedly it was done by the artist's left hand. Why do we make this conjecture? Because it is well known that in the early 1880's, Church was so severely crippled with inflammatory arthritis, he trained the left hand to do the right hand's work. Small canvases as this became a necessity for he could no longer handle his favored larger sizes. By the mid-1880's, the artist frequently had to be carried on a litter.

Background, Style, Period of Frederic Edwin Church: A sixth generation American, FEC was born and brought up in a wealthy, influential Hartford, Connecticut home of New England Puritanism. Not enthusiastic of their son's desire to become a painter, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Church nevertheless did him an incalculable favor by engaging as his instructor America's foremost landscape painter, Thomas Cole. Because the English born Cole revered the styles of Turner and Constable, while embracing heroic subjects in a setting reminiscent of Claude Lorraine, FEC was schooled in these traditions. He followed Cole into the Hudson River School--a loose term for a group of American painters, active between 1825-1870, specializing in Romantic landscapes that extolled the wonders of Nature. (Not all painted the Hudson -River-Adirondacks area, nor were all aware of being members of such a school; its name was given because some of the earliest members, such as Washington Allston, were actually drawn to the natural scenery of the Hudson River and its environs.)

Spending two years as Cole's only student, young Church soon developed his own Romantic style, creating large symphonic paintings with dramatic luminous treatments. By the time he was 20 years old, he was an artistic and financial success. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Church became reconciled to their son's career, although his mother continued such gentle admonitions as: "God's world is pleasant. And when with pencil you imitate the work of HIS Hand let your heart praise the giver, but let not the pleasure of the world, the vanities, fill your mind and you lose the pearl of great price."

Just how much effect the maternal counseling had on the young painter is not known, but it indicates a milieu which surrounded Church throughout his life. Surely, FEC was the right painter for his time (in truth, the 1840's and the 1850's were right decades for all talented artists). Anxious to be culturally, as well as commercially, independent of Mother Europe and confidently hoping reconciliation would avoid any violent North/South conflict, the USA needed and wanted a heroic image of its very own. To help achieve this goal, artists were encouraged to play a vital role, spiritualism was widespread and the era was the America of Manifest Destiny. Church's cosmic landscapes inspired a devout patriotism; no other painter of the 1850's and the 1860's enjoyed the same popular response. Showings of his canvases were public events. Two of his paintings, Niagara (1857) and Heart of the Andes (1859) gained world recognition for American art. In 1859, England's official voice on art, Art Journal, proclaimed Frederic Edwin Church the heir apparent of the great J.M.W. Turner. "On this American more than any other--but we wish particularly to say it without impugning his originality--does the mantle of our greatest painter appear to us to have fallen. Westward the sun of art seems rolling."

Rejecting European travel as he had European education, Church was determined to be the most American of painters. For him, the Grand Tour was New World travel and the subjects of his canvases ranged from varied beautiful locales within his own country to the humid valleys of the Tropics to the icy splendors of the Arctic north. Before painting at a near or distant site, the artist diligently read about the place's history, geography, geology, and climate, as well as the background and culture of its people. Church's library in his home (now a museum) reflects his inquiring, studious mind and varied interests. Not until he was in his early 40's and at the height of his powers, did FEC make his only journey to the cradle of western civilization, from 1867-1869. The Old World had been visually mined in countless sketches but Church's oils combine the freshness of discovery with the assured ease resulting from painstaking preparation, scholarly knowledge and innate talent. He seemed to absorb the very character of an ancient locale; our Moonrise in Greece demonstrates Church's aesthetic skill in revealing something about man and nature, their partnership enduring through the centuries. Our oil also demonstrates a habit of Church's: on the site to make many detailed notes, color sketches and take many photographs to use as supportive aids for later paintings to be done in his studio. In like manner, other important works resulting from his one sojourn to the Old World are: Jerusalem (1870), The Parthenon (1871), Syria by the Sea (1873), The Aegean Sea (1878).

Following the tragic, divisive Civil War, idealism began to dissolve in the American psyche. America had lost her national innocence and art in general its once enjoyed historical purpose. For a while, Church was generally considered exempt, 'he is the only painter with anything cosmical in aim and idea." Nevertheless, he apparently accepted the troubled confusion of an uncertain generation for he gave up his concept of landscapes as national history. By the 1880's transcendent in America was a new era, the age of Darwin and of Science. This new reality directly contradicted the reality of Church's ideas and style. His advancing physical infirmities forced FEC into retirement as a producing artist for the last quarter of his century. At the time of his death in 1900 the use of photographs as an art technique was suspect and Church seemed dated or vaguely known to the young. The traditional had surrendered to the contemporary.

Iconology, Significance of Frederic Edwin Church's Works: As we might say Church's sketches had anticipated Impressionism, we might ask what or who anticipated Church's paintings? By studying Jan van Eyck's medieval tendency to reveal essential truths within natural appearances and Raphael's Renaissance manner of dramatically portraying observations of the visual world, one might consider these two painters as spiritual art--ancestors of FEC. Viewed with an understanding of his artistic heritage and his country's cultural environment, Church's achievements are notable and lasting. He created the iconology for the America of Manifest Destiny. What Emerson and Irving did for America's literature, Church did for America's art.

After a century of neglect, exhibits of FEC's sketches and paintings are again shown in art galleries. Church's The Icebergs was sold for $2,500,000 in 1979, up to that time the highest figure ever registered at an art auction in the USA (at Sotheby-Parke Bernet, New York). In the foreword of the National Gallery's publication of its 1980 exhibit on American Light in the mid-19th century, Director J. Carter Brown writes, "Perhaps the most crucial artist of that period, Frederic Edwin Church, now emerges as the most technically able and original painter in America prior to Homer and Thomas Eakins."

Prepared for the Docent Council
By Helen Wilikie
March 18, 1983

Credits:
Mrs. Lockwood de Forest for her invaluable assistance (February 1983) by providing pertinent data for the Provenance of Moonrise in Greece.

Robert Henning Jr., Curator of Collections, SBMA, for his invaluable help and expert guidance (March 1983) for the Description of Moonrise in Greece.

Bibliography:

Books:
Huntington, David C. The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church; Vision of an American Era. New York: George Braziller, 1966.

Lindquist-Cook, Elizabeth. The Influence of Photography on American Landscape Painting, 1839-1880. New York: Garland (outstanding dissertation in the Fine Arts), 1977.

Novak, Barbara, American Painting of the Nineteenth Century; Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969.

Nature and Culture; American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Periodicals:
Lindquist-Cook, Elizabeth, "Frederic Church's Stereographic Vision," Art in America, Vol. 61, No. 5, September-October 1973, pp.71-75.

Steadman, David, "Oil Sketches by Frederic E. Church," American Art Review, Vol.III, No. 1, January-February 1976, pp.116-122.

Tillim, Sidney, "The Ideal and the Literal Sublime; Reflections on Painting and Photography in America," Artforum, Vol. 14, pt. 2, Issue 9, May 1976, pp.58-61.

Exhibition and Collection Catalogs:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Paintings by Frederic E. Church, N.A.," May 28-October
15, 1900.

National Collection of Fine Arts, "Frederic Edwin Church," February 12-March 13, 1966 with an introduction by David Huntington.

National Gallery of Art, "American Light; the Luminist Movement 1850-1875; Paintings, Drawings, Photographs," February 10-June 15, 1980.

Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, "Close Observations; Selected Oil sketches by Frederic E. Church, from the collections of Cooper-Hewitt Museum," 1978.


SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

Church studied with Thomas Cole between 1844 and 1846 and adopted his teacher’s method of synthesizing natural elements in meticulously painted landscapes. Inspired by the writings of naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, Church traveled throughout South America and along the coast of northeastern Canada in the 1850s, making sketches for the monumental paintings that cemented his reputation as the greatest landscape painter of his generation. In 1867, Church embarked on a tour of the Holy Land, sailing to Athens in 1869 to sketch the Parthenon. This 1889 scene of an undetermined locale derives from sketches or photographs Church made on site on this earlier trip. Painted in Mexico, where the artist convalesced in the late 1880s, the painting’s elegant composition and elegiac mood are characteristic of Church’s late works, which often reused earlier material.

- SBMA Gallery Label, 2012