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Frederic Edwin Church (artist) American, 1826 - 1900 El Rio de Luz (The River of Light), 1877 oil on canvas overall: 138.1 x 213.7 cm (54 3/8 x 84 1/8 in.) framed: 160.7 x 237.5 x 7.6 cm (63 1/4 x 93 1/2 x 3 in.) Gift of the Avalon Foundation 1965.14.1 On View |
Like his teacher, Thomas Cole, Church conveyed a sense of awesome sublimity in his landscapes by celebrating the seemingly infinite wonders of the natural world. The artist devoted a great deal of time to scientific study, believing that a knowledge of optics, meteorology, botany, and ecology would greatly enhance his work. After reading the journalistic accounts of the German naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt, Church explored wilderness regions from the arctic to the equator.
El Rio de Luz (The River of Light) is a fanciful pastiche based on numerous sketches and notations that Church had made during an 1857 trip to South America. Despite the time-lapse of twenty years, the tightly focused realism, the overall tonal harmony and restrained coloration, and the compositionial unity all lend a remarkable cohesiveness to the work. Church rendered the verdant foliage with exquisite attention to detail, and his virtuoso treatment of tropical sunlight diffused by morning mist makes the atmosphere seem tangible. Red-breasted hummingbirds, a flock of waterfowl, and a distant canoeist occupy the scene, but they do not disturb the overall mood of tranquility. Confronted with the glowing light and heavy vapors of this raw landscape, the viewer is invited to liken daybreak in the tropical rainforest to the dawn of creation itself.