It's the 200th birthday of a favorite artist! Frederic Edwin Church was born May 4, 1826. Here are a few of his paintings: "The Heart of the Andes" (1859), "Cotopaxi" (1862), "The Icebergs" (1861), and "West Rock, New Haven" (1849). Stephen Jay Gould wrote an article about that "Andes" painting and its scientific significance. Church had painted it in tribute to German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who was the first European to attempt to climb the ice-covered mountain in the picture, Chimborazo in Ecuador. Church was even going to ship the large painting (5-1/2 feet by 10 feet) to Humboldt in Berlin, so he could see it, but Humboldt died before those arrangements could be made. Today, the painting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the same room as Emanuel Leutze's famous "Washington Crossing the Delaware."
There is a brand-new biography of church by Victoria Johnson, "Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World."
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