“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 landsouth of Hudson, N.Y., that he would transform into his home,Olana. Inspired by the architecture of the Near East, Churchcollaborated with architect Calvert Vaux to build a stone, brickand polychrome stenciled home on the property. Olana is Church’smost personal creation, his most complex work of art and his lastgreat masterpiece – a three-dimensional Hudson River landscapecrowned 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.