Cotopaxi
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Frank R. McCoy
Accession Number
1965.12
Tags
About this artwork
Frederic Church was an ambitious painter and enthusiastic amateur scientist. He had read Darwin's books and Alexander von Humboldt's descriptions of Cotopaxi,"the most dreadful volcano...its explosions most frequent and disastrous."The fabled Ecuadorian mountain provided both a poetic symbol of God's creation and an exciting window into the planet's natural history. Geology was a new science in the nineteenth century, and Church was among those who believed that volcanoes offered clues to the ag...
About the Artist
Frederic Edwin Church · 1826–1900
Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), born in Hartford, Connecticut, to a prosperous silversmith and banker father, Joseph Church, pursued art from youth thanks to his family's wealth. At age 18, introduced by patron Daniel Wadsworth, he studied under Thomas Cole in Catskill, New York, from 1844 to 1846, sketching across New England and earning Cole's praise for possessing "the finest eye for drawing...