Cotopaxi
1855Frederic Edwin ChurchBorn: Hartford, Connecticut 1826Died: New York, New York 1900oil on canvas28 x 42 in. (71.1 x 106.8 cm)Smithsonian American Art MuseumGift of Mrs. Frank R. McCoy1965.12Smithsonian American Art Museum
2nd Floor, East Wing
Frederic Church was an ambitious painter and enthusiastic amateur scientist. He had read Darwin's books and Alexander von Humboldt's descriptions of Cotopaxi,"the most dreadful volcano...its explosions most frequent and disastrous."The fabled Ecuadorian mountain provided both a poetic symbol of God's creation and an exciting window into the planet's natural history. Geology was a new science in the nineteenth century, and Church was among those who believed that volcanoes offered clues to the age and origins of the earth.
ALBERT BIERSTADT
American, born Germany, 1830 - 1902
Indians Spear Fishing
1862
Oil on canvas
19 ¼ x 29 ¼ inches
Landscape as a form of theater and spectacle culminated in 19th-century American art with the work of Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt. Both artists emigrated from Europe at young ages and went on to achieve success as interpreters of the American West. The new, epic landscape they depicted functioned as a national symbol of grandeur and promise, yet at the same time it served as rumination on the subject of nature and the divinity to be found within it.
Bierstadt first left the East Coast to travel west in 1859, accompanying a government-sponsored trip from Missouri to the Rocky Mountains. Compiled from close observation, sketches, and stereoscopic views taken on the expedition, Indians Spear Fishing portrays the West as a pristine, sublime wilderness that seemingly could be found only in the Bible's Book of Genesis. Within a compressed space, Bierstadt draws together barren rock formations, towering waterfalls, spindly trees, crystalline water reflecting rocky outcrops, and a peak that pierces the wispy and moisture-laden clouds, turning to mist below. In the brightly lit foreground near the shore, a boat