Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara, 1857. Oil on canvas, 40 x 90 1/2 in. (101.6 x 229.9 cm). National Gallery of Art Collection, Washington D.C.
Frederic Edwin Church, a student of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School, further amplified the nationalistic sentiment for which his famous teacher’s work was known and appreciated. Church’s Niagara (1857), a monumental and thrilling landscape, transports the viewer to a uniquely American vista, whose sublime strength and beauty were considered by many to be unrivaled by any natural landmark in Europe. By employing an extremely horizontal composition, eliminating the foreground, and angling the plane of the Falls downward – so that water appears to rush past – the artist has captured and intensified the dynamic and perilous sense of nature. The panoramic marvel, which proved to be a phenomenal success when exhibited within the United States and abroad, solidified Church’s status as the premier landscape artist in the United States.
During the month of May (1857) alone, tens of thousands of spectators paid 25 cents a piece to view the massive and masterful painting, show-stoppingly illuminated in a darkened, Manhattan gallery. Can you imagine how exhilarating this theatrical experience must have been to mid 19th-century viewers, especially those unable to visit the actual tourist site (either from the New York or Canadian sides)? Niagara’s impressive month-long gallery display in the Big Apple was followed by no less than a tour of England and Scotland during the summer months, a return to New York, and then a busy exhibition schedule, including stops in Washington D.C., Baltimore, Richmond, and New Orleans. Moreover, the production of relatively inexpensive prints of the famous painting (like purchasable museum posters today) allowed for middle-class Americans to bring copies of Church’s work in to their very own homes, leading to easy name recognition for the artist. The success of the breathtakingly-cinematic landscape culminated at the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition, where the universally-praised Niagara won silver medal. As a result of Church’s savvy strategy of producing a massive work, intended from its inception as a dramatic, crowd-pleasing spectacle, his painting of the Falls earned a reputation, in the decades that followed, as the finest work ever executed by an American artist.
*Select facts derived from the www.NGA.govcollection object page: Niagara; Sarah Cash ed., Corcoran Gallery of Art. (Corcoran Gallery of Art: Washington, D.C., 2012).