Frederic Edward Church and the Blood Sun of Cotopaxi
New Yorkers in 1863 gladly paid a quarter to stand in a dark room and stare at the end of the world. Frederic Edward Church did not paint Cotopaxi because he wanted to brag about his exotic South American vacations. He painted it because his country was tearing itself to pieces.
The year was 1862. The American Civil War was grinding a generation into the dirt. Church took oil to a massive stretch of canvas and delivered a screaming volcano. He stitched together old sketches from two different trips to Ecuador to build a composite nightmare. The canvas spans over seven feet wide. It dominates the room and swallows the viewer whole.
Church realized you cannot simply paint a battlefield to capture the stench of national grief. You need an earth shattering catastrophe. The glowing red sun burning through the haze is not just a neat atmospheric trick. It is the blood of the dead spilled on American soil. The thick ash blocking out the sky is the exact color of gunpowder. It directly mirrors the black smoke rolling off distant artillery fire.
Spectators stood in the shadows of the Goupil Gallery and looked at a foreign landscape that felt entirely too close to home. Church handed them an environmental disaster standing in for a manmade one. He left them alone with a bleeding sun. He forced an entire nation to stare into the abyss and wonder if the light would ever break through the smoke.
References
Huntington, David C. The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church Vision of an American Era. New York: George Braziller, 1966.
Kelly, Franklin. Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988.