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Object Timeline
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Drawing, Niagara: The Canadian Falls and Goat Island, 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, brush and white gouache on tan wove paper. It is a part of the Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design department.
This graphite sketch of the Horseshoe Fall from the Canadian side served as one of the the preparatory drawings for Church’s first major painting of the cataracts, Niagara (1857). While many American and European artists executed paintings of Niagara before 1857, Church was the first to eliminate any land mass between the beholder and the water, which produced for the viewer the dizzying sensation of being thrown into the rushing waters toward the abyss below. Such extreme emotional responses of fear or magnificence were called “sublime” in the aesthetic jargon of the time. By experiencing the sublime in nature, one communed with God, the origin of all nature. In the finished picture, Church presented the scene as a panorama over seven feet long, which magnified the viewer’s sensation of being dwarfed by powerful natural forces.
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
28.3 x 45.7 cm (11 1/8 x 18 in.)
It has the following markings
Recto: Stamped in black ink, at lower left: Museum for Arts of Decoration - Cooper Union Verso: Stamped in black ink, at lower center: Museum of Arts of Decoration - Cooper Union
It is inscribed
Recto: Inscribed in black ink: salmon / Bright; and dated at bottom right: Oct. 1856. Verso: Inscribed in graphite: gross water
Cite this object as
Drawing, Niagara: The Canadian Falls and Goat Island, October 1856; Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900); Canada; graphite, brush and white gouache on tan wove paper; 28.3 x 45.7 cm (11 1/8 x 18 in.); Gift of Louis P. Church; 1917-4-33-a
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Frederic Church, Winslow Homer & Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape.
