Huntington wrote, 'By going north in 1859 Church was both following and leading the public mind. Hayes, a friend of Church, named an Arctic peak at the Kennedy Channel after Church in the summer of 1861. He was a member of the American Geographical and Statistical Society, where the Arctic explorer Isaac Israel Hayes had lectured, and in 1859 he journeyed to the Arctic himself.

Church too was interested in the Arctic, and in science and geography. Francis Leopold McClintock finally uncovered the fate of Franklin and his crew, which he described in an 1859 book. In 1856 the American explorer Elisha Kane published an account of his own expedition to determine Franklin's fate. The disappearance of the expedition of British explorer John Franklin, who had planned to navigate the Northwest Passage, was a popular press topic in the 1850s. Ĭhurch painted The Icebergs at a time of general interest in Arctic exploration. In the original version of the finished painting, no portion of a ship appeared at all-reducing the narrative possibilities of the picture-but Church later added the ship mast to the finished painting. The buyers, later identified as businessman Lamar Hunt and his wife Norma, donated the canvas to the Dallas Museum of Art, where it remains today.īackground In Church's final study for the painting, a stranded ship at right appears in place of the boulder. The Icebergs was auctioned for US$2.5 million, the most of any American painting to that point. It was soon put to auction in New York City, drawing significant interest as its sale coincided with renewed critical interest in Church, who had been largely forgotten in the 20th century. In 1979, the painting, which a number of New York City galleries were now hunting, was rediscovered in a home in Manchester, England, where it had remained for most of the intervening 78 years. He eventually sold the painting in England, where it disappeared from the art-world's awareness after the buyer's death in 1901. Between exhibitions in the US and England, Church added the ship mast to the painting, and retitled the work from its original The North. The painting became popular within Church's oeuvre and inspired other landscape artists' interest in the Arctic, but its apparent lack of narrative or allegory perplexed some viewers. The unconventional landscape of ice, water, and sky generally drew praise, but the American Civil War, which began the same year, lessened critical and popular interest in New York City's cultural events. Similar exhibitions in Boston and London followed. It was first displayed in New York City in 1861, where visitors paid 25 cents' admittance to the one-painting show. Considered one of Church's 'Great Pictures'-measuring 1.64 by 2.85 metres (5.4 by 9.4 feet) -the painting depicts one or more icebergs in the afternoon light of the Arctic. It was inspired by his 1859 voyage to the North Atlantic around Newfoundland and Labrador. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.The Icebergs is an 1861 oil painting by the American landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church. ^ 'Frederic Edwin Church :: Landscape in Greece'.^ 'Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866'.^ Frederic Edwin Church, Cotopaxi, 1855 Archived at the Wayback Machine, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,.^ 'Frederic Edwin Church :: Autumn on the Hudson'.

^ 'Frederic Edwin Church | Above the Clouds at Sunrise | American'.^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Carr 2007.^ 'Frederic Edwin Church :: July Sunset, Berkshire County, Massachusetts'.National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Syrian Landscape (also Landscape in Greece ) Tropical Scenery (South American Landscape) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Ĭolby College of Museum of Art, Maine Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Louisįine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VAĬollection of Henry and Sharon Martin Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York

Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. The Falls of the Tequendama near Bogota, New Granada George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, MassachusettsĪutumn (also Autumn on the Hudson )įrances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, New York Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts Twilight, 'Short Arbiter 'Twixt Day and Night' (Sunset) New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut Morning, Looking East over the Hudson Valley from Catskill MountainsĪlbany Institute of History and Art, New York July Sunset (also July Sunset, Berkshire County, Massachusetts ) Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford, in 1636

Frederic edwin church olana