Olana Collection – serie

"The wide variety of selections from Frederic Edwin Church's collection of his own paintings shows the master in all phases of his career, in sketches and finished paintings, depicting the breadth of his subjects and the high technical skills that established him as an eminent and influential artist in his own time. As works he held on to or reacquired and kept in his house during his lifetime, they embody the heart of his artistic vision and convey a deeply personal slant. As pictures he hung and lived with at Olana, they tell the larger story of that extraordinary place and are as illuminating when seen in context as on their own."—from the IntroductionFrederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) traveled the world, captured its beauty in countless paintings, and brought it home to live at Olana, his castle on the Hudson. The name was inspired by a reference Church found to a fortress or a treasury-storehouse in ancient Persia. This extraordinary selection of Church's paintings from his collection at Olana puts the most cherished of his treasures on full display in a volume that includes eighty color plates.Church's paintings, among the most acclaimed examples of art of the Hudson River School, are found in museums and private collections around the globe. However, Church kept some of his art close by during his lifetime. The rich collection that remains at Olana includes about seven hundred pieces, including notebooks, drawings, and oils, both sketches and completed canvases. They cover the full range of Church's career chronologically and thematically. The highlights from his personal collection are found in the touring exhibition that accompanies this book. The introduction by John Wilmerding and a substantial essay by Kevin J. Avery place the work into the context of Church's life and travels and examine Church's influences and the public reception of his art. Throughout Treasures from Olana, they discuss how profoundly Church's hilltop home and the surrounding landscape inspired and informed his work. His paintings, in turn, illuminate Olana more than a century after his death. The Olana Partnership, Hudson, N.Y., and New York State's Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, Albany, N.Y., organized Treasures from Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church.

"The site is the result of a careful study of the river-banks, and commands so many views of varied beauty, that all the glories of the Hudson may be said to circle it."—H. W. French, Art and Artists in Connecticut, 1879In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name. The exhibition and its accompanying publication Glories of the Hudson: Frederic Edwin Church's Views from Olana mark the quadricentennial of his discovery by highlighting Frederic Church's sketches of the prospect from his hilltop home overlooking the river. Church made his first sketch of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains from Red Hill—the south end of the property that became his home, Olana—in 1845, on a sketching expedition suggested by his teacher Thomas Cole. Returning to the Hudson Valley in 1860 as the nation's most famous and best-paid artist, Church settled on a farm on the lower slope of the Sienghenbergh, securing for himself and his new wife a splendid vantage point for studying, sketching, and painting the river. Church continued to add land to his property, attaining new and varied vistas of the river, and crowned the estate with a Persian-inspired house designed to frame splendid views of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. Church never tired of his views of the river, documenting his passion for the Hudson in paintings, oil sketches, and drawings. From Olana, he observed the transformations wrought by the changing seasons, weather, and light, capturing chilly winter snows, brilliant sunsets, and passing storms in sketches executed with a few brushstrokes or autumn colors and clear winter light in more finished easel paintings. The best of these are reproduced here, in eighty-three illustrations, sixty-nine in full color, some of them published for the first time. The essay by Evelyn D. Trebilcock and Valerie A. Balint, the introduction by Kenneth John Myers, and the foreword by John K. Howat together provide an absorbing narrative of the development of the Hudson River School and its most successful artist.The Olana Partnership, Hudson, New York, and New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Albany, New York, organized Glories of the Hudson:Frederic Edwin Church's Views from Olana, held from May 23 to October 12, 2009

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).