Object number1864.1.16
Autumn in North America
Datec. 1856
Artist
Frederic Edwin Church
(American, 1826-1900)
CultureAmerican
MediumOil on board
DimensionsUnframed: 11 1/4 x 17 in. (28.58 x 43.18 cm)
Framed: 18 x 23 7/8 x 2 1/4 in. (45.72 x 60.64 x 5.72 cm)
Framed: 18 x 23 7/8 x 2 1/4 in. (45.72 x 60.64 x 5.72 cm)
Credit LineGift of Matthew Vassar
On View
On viewPeriod19th c
Classification(s)
SignedSigned lower right: F CHURCH
BibliographyFoshay, Ella M., and Sally Mills. All Seasons and Every Light: Nineteenth Century American Landscapes from the Collection of Elias Lyman Magoon. Poughkeepsie, N.Y: Vassar College Art Gallery, 1983, p. 42;
Humanizing Landscapes: Geography, Culture, and the Magoon Collection. Poughkeepsie: FLLAC, 2000, p. 61, repr.;
Mundy, James. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center: Vassar College The History and Collection. New York: Prestel Publishing, 2007, pp. 76-77 repr.;
Nobuyuki, Okabe. Paris--New York; Modern Paintings in 19th and 20th Century Master Works from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College. Japan: Yamagata Museum of Art, 2008, cat. no. 9 ProvenanceCollections: Elias MagoonVassar Exhibitions
Exhibition HistoryAll Seasons and Every Light, Vassar College Art Gallery, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, October 14 - December 16, 1983; DeCordova and Dana Museum and Park, Lincoln, MA, February 5 - March 25, 1984; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, March 25 - July 1, 1984; Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, November 16, 1984 - January 13, 1985;The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature, 1830-1880, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, June 21- September 20, 1998;
The Humanizing Landscapes: Geography, Culture and the Magoon Collection, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, October 5 - December 20, 2000;
Second Sight: Originality, Duplicity, and the Object, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, January 14 - April 10, 2005;
A Focused Collection: The Hudson River School, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, April 21 - July 29, 2007; Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, August 17 - October 19, 2007;
Paris--New York; Modern Paintings in 19th and 20th Century Master Works from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, Shimane Art Museum, Matsue, Japan, March 7 - May 11, 2008; Ishibashi Museum of Art, Kurume, Japan, May 17 - July 20, 2008; Yamagata Museum of Art, Yamagata, Japan, July 30 - August 31, 2008; Fuchu Art Museum, Fuchu, Japan, September 6 - November 3, 2008; Miyazaki Prefectural Art Museum, Miyazaki, Japan, November 14 - December 14, 2008
Label TextReducing an entire continent to a northeastern forest interior, Frederic Church solidifies a vanishing American wilderness within the painting plane. Early in his career, Church had
studied under Thomas Cole, regarded as the father of the Hudson River School. The young painter moved to the Catskill Mountains, a picturesque environment that was also the site of destructive settlement and logging. There, he learned to preserve the beauty of the natural world, even if only through fiction. In these ahistorical representations, Church collaged together various sketches of local flora and fauna as a form of veneration, uprooting their sense of place and transplanting their native genealogy into the immaterial realm. The early morning autumn light stretches to the foreground, signaling a new day, a new opportunity to mend the spiritual fissure between humanity and nature. Painting at a time of intense political fragmentation in the United States, Church used landscape as a device to nostalgically remind his Northern audience of their country’s founding values: their god-given right to own and improve supposedly “uncultivated” and “wild” land.
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