Frederic Edwin Church

Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter and one of the stars of the Hudson River School. Born in Connecticut in 1826, he studied under Thomas Cole and then set out to paint the wonders of the whole hemisphere, traveling to South America, the Arctic, and the Middle East. He turned what he saw into vast, detailed canvases of volcanoes, icebergs, and tropical forests that amazed nineteenth century audiences.

His huge painting of Niagara Falls and his glowing South American scenes drew paying crowds who treated a single picture as a full evening's entertainment. Church combined careful scientific observation with a real sense of awe, matching the spirit of exploration in his age. He later built a fantastical Persian-style house above the Hudson River, called Olana, which still stands as a monument to his imagination.