ABOUT THE BOOK

“They came to see the world.”

New York, spring 1859. Outside Frederic Church’s Tenth Street studio, crowds gathered to see his magnificent Heart of the Andes: a ‘near supernatural’ rendering of the majestic landscape the artist traveled thousands of miles to capture on canvas.

Frederic Church painted the lush jungles of South America, the immense icebergs of Newfoundland, and the deserts and ancient ruined cities of the Middle East, where he and his wife traveled after the devastating loss of their two young children. And he painted the verdant, luminous Hudson River Valley where he first studied painting and where he built Olana, the estate whose landscape itself became a work of art.

Glorious Country traces the path of a towering artist and of his country in an era of fervent change. Church worked and lived in New York in the city’s formative years. He was a founder of its first great museum, the Met. In his paintings, he conveyed his passion for the exquisite natural beauty of the United States, and also for a Union free of monarchy and of slavery.

A master artist and citizen, Church brought the world to America, and America to the world.