“Tropical Scenery”
More from the Hudson River School of Art.
“Tropical Scenery” is a dream-like oil on canvas painting from 1873 by the American artist, Frederic Edwin Church. This piece was based on sketches from several excursions to the country of Ecuador in South America that Church had taken several decades prior. He created a series of paintings in his studio based on these adventures, such as the one shown here. The first trip was taken in 1853 with businessman, Cyrus West Field, to have Church paint scenes to lure investors. The second trip was made in 1857 with fellow artist, Louis Rémy Mignot.
Perhaps because “Tropical Scenery” was painted from memory so many years after the fact, the fine detail that is seen in his earlier South American inspired works is replaced by a more mellow and diffused, almost dream-like vision. The scenery isn’t any one particular place, but rather a composite piece with elements of different areas put into one landscape. A solitary figure, a woman, can be seen in the foreground. This is a common element for landscapes produced in the Hudson River School of Art style.
“Tropical Scenery” is currently in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York, in the United States.
For more on Frederic Edwin Church, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
