Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser – författare

A new look at George Caleb Bingham’s iconic river paintings and his creative process in making themGeorge Caleb Bingham (1811–1879) moved to Missouri as a child and began painting the scenes of Missouri life for which he is now famous in the 1840s. Navigating the West explores how Bingham’s iconic river paintings reveal the cultural and economic significance of the massive Mississippi and Missouri waterways to mid-19th-century society. Focusing on the artist’s working methods and preparatory drawings, the book also explores Bingham’s representations of people and places and situates these images in a dialogue with other contemporary depictions of the region. Of particular note are two landmark essays investigating Bingham’s creative process through comparisons of infrared images of 17 of his paintings with both his preparatory drawings and the completed works, casting new light on his previously understudied process. Technical analysis of the artist’s lauded masterpiece, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, reveals Bingham’s considerable revisions to the painting. In the concluding essay, the 20th-century revival of the artist’s work is discussed within the context of American Regionalism and in light of a shifting sequence of narratives about the nation’s past and future.Distributed for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Saint Louis Art MuseumExhibition Schedule:Amon Carter Museum of American Art(10/04/14–01/04/15)Saint Louis Art Museum(02/22/15–05/17/15)The Metropolitan Museum of Art(06/22/15–09/20/15)

On the two-hundredth anniversary of Frederic Edwin Church’s birth, leading scholars explore how his wide-ranging work continues to resonate in today’s world The work of Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), renowned American landscape painter, was indelibly shaped by global travel. Church’s art was defined by place: early trips took him to South America, across the northeastern United States, and to the Arctic; later he visited the Caribbean, Europe, and the Middle East; in his final decades, he spent long sojourns in Mexico. Intimate drawings and oil sketches executed on-site illuminate his encounters with new environments and cultures. Large, extravagantly detailed paintings produced for public exhibition made him internationally famous. The designed landscapes, extensive collections, and striking architecture of his home, Olana, in the Hudson Valley, reflect the many worlds through which he traveled. In Frederic Church: Global Artist, original essays by scholars from across the humanities reveal Church as an artist enmeshed in the economic and territorial expansionism of the nineteenth century. Church’s works engage with questions of industrialization and environmental destruction, the rise and fall of empires, the construction of national identity, and the cataclysmic effects of slavery and civil war. This lavishly illustrated volume examines the artist in his time and demonstrates his continuing relevance in our own. Published in association with the Olana Partnership Exhibition Schedule: Olana NY State Historic Site(May 17–October 25, 2026)

Preface and Acknowledgments by Washburn S. OberwagerIn 1865 the American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church and his wife, Isabel, traveled to Jamaica on a sojourn of recovery after the tragic deaths of their two young children Herbert and Emma. A time to mourn and escape from the constant reminders found at their home, Olana, the Churches' trip to Jamaica also provided ample inspiration for Frederic. The Olana Collection includes eight oil sketches, an ink drawing, and a pencil drawing Church made in Jamaica. Five of these oil sketches on paper Church chose to mount to canvas and frame for his and Isabel's enjoyment; over the years they have hung in different rooms at Olana. From these works, and others held by the Cooper-Hewitt, Church created two major studio oils, The Vale of St. Thomas, Jamaica, 1867 (the Wadsworth Atheneum) and The After Glow, 1867 (the Olana Collection). Within Church's oeuvre the studies of Jamaican sunsets, mountains, and foliage are particularly lovely. Church wrote of Jamaica: "The scenery is superb.... I have accomplished a great amount of work—but there is so much to do that I am at a loss to decide day by day—what to paint."The 2010 exhibit at Olana will help explain Church's working process by showing Sunset Jamaica and the resulting studio work The After Glow together; it will include five works never before exhibited and reveal Church's interesting use of his photography collection both as an aide-mémoire and as substrate for sketching. Fern Hunting among Picturesque Mountains includes forty-eight color illustrations, as well as essays by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser (on Church's Jamaica work) and Katherine Manthorne (about Church's friends and fellow artists who also traveled to Jamaica to paint).