Frederic Church (1826ndash;1900); the most celebrated painter in the United States during the mid-19th century; created monumental landscapes of North and South America; the Arctic; and the Middle East. These paintings were unsurpassed in their attention to detail; yet the significance of this pictorial approach has remained largely unexplored. In this important reconsideration of Churchrsquo;s works; Jennifer Raab offers the first sustained examination of the aesthetics of detail that fundamentally shaped 19th-century American landscape painting. Moving between historical context and close readings of famous canvasesmdash;including Niagara; The Heart of the Andes; and The Icebergsmdash;Raab argues that Churchrsquo;s art challenged an earlier model of painting based on symbolic unity; revealing a representation of nature with surprising connections to scientific discourses of the time. The book traces Churchrsquo;s movement away from working in oil on canvas to shaping the physical landscape of Olana; his self-designed estate on the Hudson River; a move that allowed the artist to rethink scale and process while also engaging with pressing ecological questions. Beautifully illustrated with dramatic spreads and striking details of Churchrsquo;s works; Frederic Church: The Art and Science of Detail offers a profoundly new understanding of this canonical artist.
#953730 in eBooks 2015-09-28 2015-09-28File Name: B015X2CEH6
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