Frederic Church and the Landscape Oil Sketch

The American Painter Frederic Church (1826–1900) rose to fame as a member of the Hudson River School, which inaugurated the great tradition of American landscape painting. He was also a leading proponent of the landscape oil sketch made rapidly out-of-doors, in front of the subject. Such informal and spontaneous works often served as preparatory studies for large-scale paintings, and played a vital role in landscape practice and pedagogy in both Europe and America from the mid-nineteenth century to around 1900.

This book features some thirty sketches Church executed in the United States, Jamaica, Europe and the Middle East over the course of his career. A number of them come from Olana, the artist’s magnificent home overlooking the Hudson River and now a New York State historic site. An introductory essay by Andrew Wilton is accompanied by detailed commentaries on the featured works.

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