Frederic Edwin Church: Romantic Landscapes and Seascapes [Hardcover]

Fredrick Edwin Church is generally acknowledged as being the greatest American landscape painter of the 19th century. I believe he is one of the best painters, period, to have taken on the task of revealing and capturing, in oil on canvas, the magnificent pageantry of the natural world-- skies, mountains, forests, waters, even icebergs. His ability to render intricate botanical and geological detail combined with luminous atmospheric effects, is unsurpassed.

In recent times, we have been fortunate to have had at least 3 significant books devoted to his work, the 1989 Fredrick Edwin Church, published in conjunction with the major show of his work at the National Gallery, 2005's Fredrick Church, by John Howat, and now Fredrick Edwin Church, Romantic Landscapes and Seascapes, the subject of this review.

This book is essentially the catalogue of 37 paintings that comprised a recent 2 city exhibition, and it presents them in great detail. The main limitation of this book and the exhibit it documents, is that unlike the National Galley show, we have only a few of Church's major works included. Well over half the paintings are studies or minor paintings. There are, however, significant paintings that we can now more fully appreciate, like The Aegean Sea, that was previously only available as a tiny thumbnail, and others I have never seen before in any form. A number of his lesser known later works, that focused on the old world, as opposed to his more popular new world vistas, are also included here. Had the book contained only these works, it would be a nice addition for a serious collector of Church, but the second section greatly widens its range and appeal to the general collector.

While the later portion duplicates the paintings of the first section, to an excessive degree, it also includes many of the major works not included in the exhibit, showing the studies and the finished works that grew from them, side by side. In addition to this, the quality of color reproductions is suburb; they are bright, clear, saturated and subtle. No single reproduction can successfully reproduce the elaborate compositions of Church; sometimes the shadow areas are too dark, sometimes the bright colors washed out or made garish, etc, but this book does an outstanding job.

It may not be the best single book on Church, due the limitations I mentioned, but for anyone who loves his work, it is a very welcome addition. For the serious collector of his work, this is a must.

A decent book with a fair number of good quality reproductions. However, a lot of them are small (half page or less and the book itself is not big)and Church's work needs to be seen big. The selection is also not great since quite a few of his most notable pieces are missing. I probably would have passed on this if I had flipped through it in a book store verses buying online.

a wonderful book filled with enough images to blow your mind! lol on a serious note- this book has an amazing collection of Church's paintings, all of which are sure to make a lasting impression on you about the romantic landscape. Great reproductions and a very informative read.

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