Niagara

Frederic Edwin Church pulls off something bold in this 1857 painting of Niagara Falls. Rather than giving us a comfortable spot to watch from, he sets us right at the brink of the water, with the green and white current rushing forward and dropping away into mist. A faint rainbow curves across the scene, adding a quiet moment of grace among all that churning energy. Church chose to paint the Canadian Horseshoe Falls instead of the American side that most artists favored, which gave viewers a surprising new angle on a place they thought they knew by heart.

The result comes from serious homework. Church visited the falls more than once and filled his sketchbooks with studies of the moving water, determined to get every ripple and rush convincing. His patience shows. When the finished work went on display, it became a genuine event, with people happily paying admission just to stand in front of it. As a member of the Hudson River School, Church shared that group's love of big, dramatic American landscapes rendered with careful detail, and this canvas turned him into one of the country's best known painters. Many at the time saw it as more than a waterfall too, reading in its raw power a reflection of a bold and growing nation.