Landscape Artist

Hudson River School.

During the middle decades of the nineteenth century there emerged a group of American painters influenced by the currents of European Romanticism and inspired by the natural grandeur of their homeland. Several of these landscape painters came to be known collectively as the Hudson River School.In the 1870s the landscapes of Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran brought the grandeur of the American West into the popular imagination. But in the genre of landscape painting Frederic Church became its most famous and admired exponent.

Early Years.

Born on 4 May 1826 in Hartford, Connecticut, to Joseph Church, a prominent and wealthy businessman, and Eliza Janes Church, Frederic studied art briefly in Hartford and displayed considerable ability. In 1844 he became the first pupil accepted by Thomas Cole, the artist considered to be most representative of the Hudson River School. From Cole he...