In Search of the Promised Land: Paintings by Frederic Edwin Church

In this lavishly illustrated new study, Gerald Carr focuses on several aspects of the life and art of Frederic Edwin Church (1826 - 1900): his individuality, his absorption with the natural sciences, and his lifelong zest for travel. Two introductory chapters prepare the reader for the five chapters organized around the geographical regions where Church traveled and resided, and which he depicted in his paintings: North and South America, the Arctic, the Mediterranean and Europe, and upstate New York. Carr's approaches to Church via his biography and his artistic individuality are essentially new to art-historical literature, as are his correlations of Church's art with 19th century conceptions of geography, and with contemporary music and operatic performance. This informative volume represents the latest in Church and art history scholarship.