: "Treasures from Olana: Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church"
features 18 paintings, never before seen together outside of New
York State, by the Nineteenth Century landscape painter
(1826-1900). The exhibition is drawn from the permanent
collection at Olana, the home that Church built for himself in
Upstate New York that is currently undergoing a restoration.
"Treasures from Olana" will be on view May 20 through September
10, at the Portland Museum of Art, Seven Congress Square.
This exhibition provides a special opportunity to see private
paintings by Church, ones that Church kept for himself or his
family; many have a special personal or artistic significance.
Scenes of Maine, Jamaica, the Near East and Germany express
Church's impulse to capture grandiose landscapes from all
locales. From small and intimate to bold in scale and
presentation, these private works give a full sense of the range
of Church's career and artistic output.
Trained by Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School of
landscape painters, and inspired by the writings of the explorer
and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, Church demonstrated from
an early age immense talent and global curiosity. He traveled
extensively, and in his New York City studio he painted
monumental pictures of subjects in South and North America, the
sub-Arctic, Europe and the Near East.
From the late 1850s to the 1870s, he displayed his most ambitious
canvases as quasi-theatrical events, drawing thousands of people
in America and Great Britain, and marketing many of his works in
fine engravings and lithographs. As striking as any of Church's
major paintings are his small oil studies and sketches, many
executed wholly or partly in the field and several in the studio
as designs for major works.
Frederic Edwin Church (United States, 1826-1900), "El Khasné,
Petra," April 1874, oil on canvas, 60 1/2 by 50 1/4 inches.
In 1860, he purchased the first of several parcels of land
south of Hudson, N.Y., that he would transform into his home,
Olana. Inspired by the architecture of the Near East, Church
collaborated with architect Calvert Vaux to build a stone, brick
and polychrome stenciled home on the property. Olana is Church's
most personal creation, his most complex work of art and his last
great masterpiece - a three-dimensional Hudson River landscape
crowned with his own Persian treasure house.
Named by the Churches for "a fortress treasure house" in ancient
Persia, Olana encompasses the house, the farm and the entire
250-acre landscape. Church also planned this setting to capture
the panoramic vistas of the Hudson River and the Catskill
Mountains.
During his residence at Olana, Church framed many of his own
paintings, including both sketches and larger, fully realized
works, expressly for presentation in his home. 'Treasures from
Olana" represents a small selection of the paintings from the
house, as well as Olana's most important large painting, "El
Khasné, Petra," a scene in what is modern-day Jordan and an
example of the type of Eastern architecture that became the
source for Church's own treasure castle.
The exhibition has been curated by Metropolitan Museum of Art
curator Kevin J. Avery. The Olana Partnership, Hudson, N.Y., and
New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic
Preservation, Albany, organized "Treasures from Olana."
For information, www.portlandmuseum.org or 07-775-6148.
