Frederic Edwin Church

Frederic Church painted spectacle and charged people to see it. Heart of the Andes was shown alone in a darkened New York room in 1859, framed like a window, with viewers handed opera glasses. Thousands queued. It was closer to an event than an exhibition.

He studied under Cole, then went considerably further, travelling to South America twice on Humboldt’s trail, to Newfoundland for icebergs, and later to the Middle East. The paintings pack an implausible amount of specific botany and geology into single canvases while still reading as coherent scenes.

Taste turned against him within his own lifetime, and by the 1880s the grand manner looked dated. He spent his later years building Olana, a Persian influenced house above the Hudson, which is now as visited as the paintings. Rheumatism in his right hand had largely ended his painting by then.