Church, Frederic Edwin - Chimborazo (1864)

Frederic Edward Church did not paint Chimborazo to give New Yorkers a pretty picture for their parlors. He painted it to blow their minds and empty their wallets. It was 1864 and America was tearing itself apart in a brutal civil war. Church decided to look south instead. He dragged himself all the way to Ecuador just to follow the muddy footprints of the legendary explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Church wanted the Andes and he wanted the raw unregulated power of the earth.

What he brought back was a brilliant illusion. Chimborazo is a massive and calculated composite. Church stitched together multiple viewpoints into one impossible hyper-realistic mountain scene. He painted the jungle floor with microscopic botanical perfection and then washed the distant peaks in hazy atmospheric smoke. It is oil on canvas but it feels like stepping through a portal into another universe.

The public absolutely lost their minds. They lined up by the thousands in London and New York just to see this single painting. They paid hard cash for the ticketed privilege. People actually stood in darkened rooms and stared through opera glasses at the tiny jungle leaves and the distant snowcaps. They desperately wanted an escape from the bloody headlines of war and Church gave it to them in four by six feet of pure cinematic spectacle. It was the nineteenth-century version of virtual reality. The artist knew exactly what he was doing. He sold them absolute awe and they bought every single brushstroke.

References

Howat, John K. American Paradise The World of the Hudson River School. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1987.

Kelly, Franklin. Frederic Edwin Church. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1989.

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