![]() 130) There was also the impending Civil War, which was threatening to tear the country apart. As Church and his contemporaries perceived, the rapid expansion of the United States westward, speeded by the Mexican War of 1846-8, made clear for the first time that, even in the massive continent of North America, land would eventually run out, leading to the complete despoliation of the wilderness." ( American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820-1880, London, 2002, p. A possible explanation can be found in Church's deep concerns about national politics. Tim Barringer writes, "This is a dramatic change from the Church of a decade earlier, whose belief in the providential civilizing mission of American seemed unshakable. There were several catalysts for this transition in Church's work, one of which was the changed and highly-charged political climate. Here he builds upon his work of the earlier 1850s to establish his own American landscape, wild, pure and divine, yet still not wholly untamable. ![]() The vibrantly chromatic sunset is full of reverence and poignantly manifests Church's fully realized vision as the symbolic and pastoral aspects of his earlier work cede to the spiritual and sublime characteristics of the landscape. With paintings such as Twilight, Mount Ktaadn, Church expresses his mature vision of the American wilderness and definitively moves beyond the work of his esteemed teacher, Thomas Cole. Kevin Sharp writes of the present work, " Twilight, Mount Ktaadn captures the heroic summit from the southeast, a view that emphasizes its solitary stature against a spectacular sky." ( For Spacious Skies: Hudson River School Paintings from the Henry and Sharon Martin Collection, New Britain, Connecticut, 2005, p. 68) In Twilight, Mount Ktaadn, Church captures Thoreau's Nature, employing richly hued, dramatic light to convey the resplendent awe that the landscape inspired yet he tempers the primordial wilderness, depicting a calm rather than wild scene. Kelly, Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. ![]() It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth." (as quoted in F. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste-land. Here was no man's garden, but the unhandshelled globe. Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful. Henry David Thoreau, who was as inspired as Church by the untamed and rugged remoteness of the Maine landscape, wrote of the place, "Perhaps I most fully realized that this was primeval, untamed, and forever untamable Nature, or whatever else men call it. 69)Ĭhurch returned to Maine in 1856 and subsequently turned away from the historical and arcadian images that dominated his early career, instead choosing to portray the rugged majesty of the place in works such as Twilight, Mount Ktaadn. In 1853 he fully believed American civilization would soon find its way to the most remote corners of the continent, and he would have encouraged such progress." ( Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. To see inland Maine as he wanted to see it, to bring it into line with his established vision of the national landscape, he had to see it as he believed it would be in the not too distant future. Franklin Kelly writes of Mount Ktaadn, "is faith in the nation's destiny determined that he show a peaceful and harmless assimilation of man into the natural world. The result of this trip was richly symbolic paintings such as the masterwork Mount Ktaadn (1853, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut), which transformed the pure landscape into a pastoral ideal that depicts man living in harmony with nature. Here he simultaneously presents a powerful and grand scene of God's nature and a picture of quiet solitude, creating a profound work that is a stunning representation of the artistic, political and social influences of his day.Ĭhurch first traveled to Mount Katahdin in search of the picturesque late in the summer of 1852. Painted at the height of his career, Twilight, Mount Ktaadn splendidly captures the majesty and promise inherent in the national landscape, the subject for which Church is most renowned. Possibly no other American so faithfully captured the higher, more elusive meanings of landscape as Frederic Edwin Church, whose unmatched ability to record natural details captivated the public, and earned him a reputation for technical brilliance even as a young man.
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