American landscape painter Frederic Church is known for his vibrant sunsets and glorious daytime skies. Church’s paintings of night skies highlight the artist’s lifelong fascination with the intersection of art and science, focusing on breathtaking atmospheric phenomena. The artist made a point of scientific accuracy in his paintings, and took particular interest in meteorological events. In this talk, Eleanor Harvey takes us on a nocturnal voyage of discovery through some of Church’s most significant paintings. Central to this talk will be a close look at Church’s painting, The Meteor of 1860, in which the artist took a significant current event and invested it with both scientific and political meaning.
Eleanor Jones Harvey is Senior Curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a leading authority on American landscape painting, and champion of American Art at the national level. Her most recent exhibition, Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, dives into famed Prussian explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt through the work of American artists such as Frederic Church.
Frederic Edwin Church, "The Meteor of 1860" (detail), 1860. Oil on canvas, 10 x 17 ½ in., Collection of Ms. Judith Filenbaum Hernstadt.
19 ноя 2023
