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| Olana, in Greenport, New York Ɱ, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons |
Years ago, when traveling through the Hudson River Valley, I stopped at Olana, Frederic Church's manorial estate. I'd known for years about Church and his place in art history, but it was the beauty and strangeness of Olana that preoccupied me while there. I'd love to share my memories or pictures, but it was truly such a long time ago, before I got my first digital camera; and although I'm sure I had my film camera, I must have been stingy with the film, for I can't find a single photo of it in my archives. What I do remember is that sense of beauty, that sense of strangeness—that sense of out-of-placeness.
Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) studied with Thomas Cole (1801-1848) for a couple of years in his early twenties, working with him both in the field and in the studio. Soon after that, Church embarked on what would become a lifetime of travel, visiting such far-flung places as Labrador to paint icebergs and the Andes to paint volcanoes. Shortly after Cole died, Church bought some land on the Hudson River, almost directly across from his mentor's home. He built a small cottage there with Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895), and then after the Civil War—he did not fight—his family went abroad, traveling to the Middle East. The architecture of this region, recorded in his sketches from the trip, inspired his vision for Olana.
Church started building Olana in 1870. Although he considered himself a self-taught architect, he worked with Calvert Vaux (1824-1895), who had helped Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) design New York City's Central Park. The building, a mish-mash of styles from Victorian to Persian to Moorish, is heavily stenciled inside and out with designs based on Church's sketches, and it is filled with knick-knacks he collected while abroad. While researching this article, I learned that the building contains over 40 of his paintings—but what I remember most is the building.
Finishing Olana consumed the last decades of Church's life. Pained by arthritis in his dominant (right) hand, he learned to paint with his left hand. At one point, while working on the estate, he wrote, “I have made about 1 ¾ miles of road this season, opening entirely new and beautiful views. I can make more and better landscapes in this way than by tampering with canvas and paint in the studio.” It seems that Olana had become his new canvas.
Here are some of Church's sketches:
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Drawing, Sunset from Olana, July 1, 1870 Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum 1 July 1870 Graphite on heavy white wove paper 9 1/8 x 12 5/8 in |
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Magdalena River, New Granada, Equador 1853 Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Graphite heightened with white on wove paper 8 3/16 x 4 3/4 in |
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Horizontal view of the Falls Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Graphite on green wove paper 3 3/4 x 5 7/8 in |
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Horizontal view of the Falls and the Canadian bank, shown from Prospect Point Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Graphite on gray wove paper 11 5/16 x 18 1/16 in |
