19th Century Art Works in Metropolitan Museum

Metropolitan Museum paper

Church’s early works (such as "Home by the Lake”, 1852) were clearly inspired by his master Thomas Cole, but then Church, inspired by the adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, traveled to South America searching new landscapes to paint. After returning to New York, Church painted "The Heart of the Andes", possibly his most famous work.

"The Heart of the Andes" does not depict a specific place in South America, but an idealized landscape, a compendium of memories from the artist’s journey to the South. At the background we can see the snow-capped Mount Chimborazo, a volcano in Ecuador that Church painted in several works. In the midst of the vegetation in the foreground a wooden cross can be spotted. Despite the enormous size of the canvas, the level of detail is spectacular, and Church has paid special attention to the flowers and exotic birds.

The Heart of the Andes is a large oil-on-canvas landscape painting by the American artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). More than five feet (1.7 meters) high and almost ten feet (3 meters) wide, it depicts an idealized landscape in the South American Andes, where Church traveled on two occasions. Its exhibition in 1859 was a sensation, and the painting established Church as the foremost landscape painter in the United States. It has been in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1909, and is among Church's most renowned works.

The Heart of the Andes is a composite of the South American landscape observed by Church during his travels. At the center right of the mountain landscape is a shimmering pool served by a waterfall. The snow-capped, majestic Mount Chimborazo of Ecuador appears in the distance; the viewer's eye is led to it by the darker, closer slopes that decline from right to left.

The evidence of human presence consists of a lightly worn path that fades away, a hamlet and church lying in the central plain, and closer to the foreground, two natives are...