Book: Frederic Church: The Art and Science of Detail

YaleNews features works recently or soon to be published by members of the University community. Descriptions are based on material provided by the publishers. Authors of new books may forward publishers’ book descriptions to us by email.

YaleNews features works recently or soon to be published by members of the University community. Descriptions are based on material provided by the publishers. Authors of new books may forward publishers’ book descriptions to us by email.

Frederic Church: The Art and Science of Detail

Jennifer Raab, assistant professor of the history of art

(Yale University Press)

Frederic Church (1826-1900), considered the most celebrated painter in the United States during the mid-19th century, created monumental landscapes of North and South America, the Arctic, and the Middle East. These paintings were unsurpassed in their attention to detail, yet the significance of this pictorial approach has remained largely unexplored.

In this reconsideration of Church’s works, Jennifer Raab offers the first sustained examination of the aesthetics of detail that fundamentally shaped 19th-century American landscape painting. Moving between historical context and close readings of famous canvases — including “Niagara,” “The Heart of the Andes,” and “The Icebergs” — Raab argues that Church’s art challenged an earlier model of painting based on symbolic unity, revealing a representation of nature with surprising connections to scientific discourses of the time. The book traces Church’s movement away from working in oil on canvas to shaping the physical landscape of Olana, his self-designed estate on the Hudson River, a move that allowed the artist to rethink scale and process while also engaging with pressing ecological questions.

See more books by members of the Yale community.

Share this with Facebook Share this with X Share this with LinkedIn Share this with Email Print this

Media Contact

Office of Public Affairs & Communications: opac@yale.edu, 203-432-1345