The Sky Bleeds Before the War
Frederic Edward Church did not paint a sunset because he wanted to capture a pretty evening in the woods. He painted a bleeding sky because the country was about to tear itself to pieces. It was 1860. The United States stood on the absolute edge of the Civil War. Church stood looking up at the sky in Maine and saw an apocalypse waiting to happen. He took those sketches back to his studio in New York City and poured all that impending doom onto an oil canvas.
Look at the final result. There are no humans wandering through this glowing apocalyptic landscape. There are no animals seeking shelter for the night. There is just an empty wilderness under a heavy red sky that feels like a threat. It is forty by sixty four inches of pure atmospheric tension. You can almost feel the air pressure dropping before a storm.
Church unveiled Twilight in the Wilderness at the Goupil Gallery in New York just as the political climate reached a boiling point. The timing was perfect. The public saw exactly what he was trying to say. The canvas sold for an astronomical sum to a private collector almost immediately after its debut. People wanted to own the warning. They wanted to look at the bleeding clouds and pretend the violence would stay trapped in the paint. But Church knew better. The wilderness was empty because everyone had gone off to fight.
References
Avery, Kevin J. Frederic Church and the Landscape of Doom. American Art Journal 24, no. 1 (1993) 72-85.
Kelly, Franklin. Frederic Edwin Church. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1989.
Howat, John K. American Paradise The World of the Hudson River School. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987.