Questroyal 2009

Frederic Edwin Church ( 1826 – 1900 ) Plate 10 Study for View near Stockbridge, Massachusetts , 1847 Oil on canvas 7 1 / 2 x 11 inches provenance Alexander Gallery, NewYork Collection of the Masco Corporation, acquired from the above Sale, Sotheby’s, NewYork, December 3, 1998 , lot 109 Berry-Hill Galleries, NewYork Michael N. Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, LLC, NewYork Private collection exhibited The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts; New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut; Hudson River Museum of Westchester, Yonkers, NewYork, A Return to Arcadia: Nineteenth-century Berkshire County Landscapes , March 1990 – February 1991 Adelson Galleries, NewYork; Meredith Long & Company, Houston, Texas, Frederic Edwin Church, Romantic Landscapes and Seascapes , November 9, 2007 –March 1, 2008 literature Franklin Kelly and Gerald L. Carr, The Early Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, 1845 – 1854 (Fort Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum, 1987 ), p. 93 . Maureen Johnson Hickey andWilliamT. Oedel, A Return to Arcadia: Nineteenth-century Berkshire County Landscapes (Pittsfield, Mass.: The Berkshire Museum, 1990 ), p. 82 , no. 13 . Gerald L. Carr, Frederic Edwin Church, Romantic Landscapes and Seascapes (NewYork: Adelson Galleries in association with Michael N. Altman Fine Art & Advisory Services, LLC., and Meredith Long & Company, 2007 ), p. 19 , no. 3 , p. 77 , fig. 21 . related works Frederic Edwin Church, Stockbridge, Massachusetts , 1847 , pencil with white gouache and white chalk on paper, 12 1 / 2 x 17 7 / 16 inches, titled, dated August 1874 upper right, inscribed upper right and left. Olana State Historic Site. Frederic Edwin Church, View of Stockbridge, Massachusetts , 1847 , oil on canvas, 27 1 / 4 x 40 inches, signed and dated 1847 lower center. Private collection. There is a resolute, progressive, and apt spirit in Church which gives a living interest to his landscapes, and fills the spectator with a sense of his rare promise in art. The Knickerbocker, 1856 1 A Discriminating Eye Created in 1847 , Study forView near Stockbridge,Massachusetts bears witness to the profound thought artist Frederic Edwin Church put forth when pre- paring his earlymasterpiece, Viewnear Stockbridge ( 1847; private collection). Similar to his teacher, Hudson River school leader Thomas Cole, Church developed a style that relied on truth to nature tempered by a discerning personal aesthetic. Early drawings for View near Stockbridge indicate that the artist systematically surveyed the landscape to review and select the elements that would create a cohesive composition. Church noted along the upper margins of one preparatory drawing that “Much of the detail in the distance cannot which I have portrayed cannot be distinguished at sunset . . . it would—I think, be well to represent a storm clearing off—and bright streamlets of water running down the rocky foreground to the meadows.” 2 These insightful annotations find elaboration in Study forView near Stock- bridge, Massachusetts . In this jewel-size painting, Church creates a compo- sition that introduces the desired passing storm in brilliant lavender hues and a radiantly exuberant sunset whose rays glimmer from the picturesque rivulet at center. — jlw Frederic Edwin Church’s works may be seen at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, ClevelandMuseum of Art,Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and his home-turned-museum, Olana State Historic Site. 1 Anonymous, “New-York Artists,” The Knickerbocker, or NewYork Monthly Magazine 48 , no. 1 (July 1856 ): 26 . 2 Franklin Kelly and Gerald L. Carr, The Early Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, 1845 – 1854 (Fort Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum, 1987 ), p. 144 .