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Drawing, Niagara Falls from the American Side, October 1856
This is a Drawing. It was created by Frederic Edwin Church. It is dated October 1856 and we acquired it in 1917. Its medium is graphite on gray-green wove paper. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.
This graphite sketch, which, according to one report, Church made from a treetop, and the oil sketch over an anonymous albumen print (hanging nearby) are the only extant compositional studies for Church’s final major Niagara painting, Niagara Falls from the American Side, executed between September 1866 and March 1867. Commissioned by the New York art dealer Michael Knoedler for the enormous sum of $15,000, the picture was intended for display at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle, but was replaced at the last minute by Church’s 1857 Niagara. Without returning to the actual site, the artist consulted sketches made a decade earlier. While the perspective was less novel or dramatic than the 1857 Niagara, the 1867 painting’s unusually large proportions (91⁄2 x 71⁄3 feet) and the high horizon line achieved a sense of nature’s beauty and tranquility as opposed to the awesome sublime of the earlier picture. In actuality, the Falls would have been swarming with tourists, adding to the natural erosion of the site. Church’s colossal canvas may have been intended to be a preservation plea for America’s great landscape icon. Purchased by the department store magnate A. T. Stewart, the painting was later acquired at auction by John S. Kennedy, who donated it to the National Gallery of Scotland.
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
Image: 44.8 x 30.6 cm (17 5/8 x 12 1/16 in.)
It is inscribed
Inscribed in graphite, lower center: Oct/56
Cite this object as
Drawing, Niagara Falls from the American Side, October 1856; Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900); USA; graphite on gray-green wove paper; Image: 44.8 x 30.6 cm (17 5/8 x 12 1/16 in.); Gift of Louis P. Church; 1917-4-317-a
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Frederic Church, Winslow Homer & Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape.
