There are 3 other images of this object. This image is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions), and as such we offer a high-resolution image of it. See our image rights statement.
Object Timeline
|
1917 |
|
|
1970 |
|
|
2006 |
|
|
2023 |
|
|
2025 |
|
Drawing, Maine Surf
This is a Drawing. It was created by Frederic Edwin Church. It is dated 1862 and we acquired it in 1917. Its medium is brush and oil paint, graphite on thin paper board. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.
From his trip to Mount Desert Island during the Civil War, Church focused on the viewer’s direct confrontation with the roiling sea and its awesome power. This plein-air sketch executed on the spot was developed into a large painting exhibited in 1863 at the National Academy of Design. In the finished canvas, Church enhanced the sublime effects by adding the sun piercing through a pink and blue sky, perhaps alluding to the end of the Civil War through divine guidance. Reviewing the picture at the National Academy, one critic wrote, “Here is magnificent force in the sea…regarded as pure power; when it dies its final death in mad froth and vapor…we feel ourselves in an audacious actual presence, whose passion moves us almost like a fact of surf.” The painting was acquired by the New York railroad and steamship magnate Marshall Owen Roberts in 1863 to hang in his Fifth Avenue mansion along with his previously acquired Church pictures Mount Katahdin (1853) and Under Niagara (1862, now lost).
Wall Label from exhibition, "Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape," Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York, NY.
This object was
donated by
Louis P. Church.
It is credited Gift of Louis P. Church.
Its dimensions are
30 x 50.7 cm (11 13/16 x 19 15/16 in.)
Cite this object as
Drawing, Maine Surf; Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900); USA; brush and oil paint, graphite on thin paper board; 30 x 50.7 cm (11 13/16 x 19 15/16 in.); Gift of Louis P. Church; 1917-4-1324
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Frederic Church, Winslow Homer & Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape.
