"Niagara" ( Eng. Niagara ), or "Niagara Falls" ( Eng. Niagara Falls ) - a picture painted by American artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) in 1857. It belonged to the Corcoran Gallery in Washington , after the disbandment of which in 2014 it was transferred to the collection of the National Gallery of Art . The size of the picture is 101.6 × 229.9 cm [1] .
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| Frederick Edwin Church | ||
| Niagara 1857 | ||
| English Niagara | ||
| Oil on canvas . 101.6 × 229.9 cm | ||
| National Gallery of Art , Washington | ||
| ( inv. 2014.79.10 ) | ||
Content
- 1 Description
- 2 History
- 3 Other paintings
- 4 See also
- 5 notes
Description
The painting depicts a view from the Canadian (that is, western) side of Niagara Falls - more precisely, on its part called the “Horseshoe” ( English Horseshoe Falls ). The image of the waterfall occupies most of the picture. There is practically nothing created by human hands in the picture - only the beauty and power of nature, complemented by the expertly created impression of water in constant motion. A rainbow is visible in the spray of a waterfall [2] .
History
Frederick Edwin Church began making preparatory sketches of Niagara Falls in 1856. In March 1856, he painted the painting “ Niagara from Goat Island, Winter ” ( Niagara from Goat Island, Winter ; Island - literally “goat island”). In 1856, Church twice more - in July and at the end of August - went to Niagara Falls, viewing it from different directions and choosing a suitable point. He made many pencil sketches, as well as oil sketches. After returning to his studio, based on his sketches and studies, Church decided to write a view of Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. Painting took him less than two months, and it was called "Niagara Falls" ( Niagara Falls ) [3] .
The screening of the painting Niagara Falls began in New York in April 1857 [3] (according to other sources, May 1, 1857 [2] ). It was organized as an exhibition of one painting in the commercial gallery Williams, Stevens, and Williams , located on Broadway . The first two days, access to the painting was free, and the painting from the very beginning aroused great public interest - thousands of people visited the exhibition [3] .
After that, in June 1857, the painting was exhibited in London , then in Glasgow , Manchester and Liverpool , and in September 1858 returned to New York. It was bought by the gallery Williams, Stevens, and Williams for a very significant amount at that time of $ 4,500 ( 2,500 for the picture itself and 2,000 for copyrights) [3] . This immediately made Church one of the richest artists in the United States, and the gallery that bought Niagara Falls subsequently recouped its costs many times by selling reproductions of the painting [2] .
The following year, the painting was exhibited in Baltimore , Washington , Richmond and New Orleans . In 1867, she was sent to the World Exhibition in Paris . By that time, the shorter name of the painting - “Niagara” [3] was already used.
In 1876, the painting "Niagara" was purchased from the New York gallery by from Buffalo for $ 12,500 . Since the city of Buffalo is located near Niagara Falls, many tourists had the opportunity to get acquainted with the Church’s picture before visiting the waterfall itself [3] .
After the disbandment of the Corcoran Gallery in 2014, the painting passed into the collection of the National Gallery of Art [1] .
Other paintings
In addition to Niagara, Church painted several other paintings depicting Niagara Falls. The most famous of them is “ Niagara Falls from the American Side ” ( Niagara Falls, from the American Side ), written in 1867 and is in the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland [4] .
See also
- Church, Frederick Edwin
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Frederic Edwin Church , Niagara, 1857 (HTML). National Gallery of Art . Date of treatment October 30, 2016.
- ↑ 1 2 3 John Grant and Ray Jones. Niagara Falls: An Intimate Portrait. - Globe Pequot, 2006 .-- 153 p. - ISBN 978-0-762-74025-3 .
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 Linda Lee Revie. The Niagara Companion: Explorers, Artists and Writers at the Falls. - Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2003 .-- 212 p. - ISBN 978-0-889-20433-1 .
- ↑ Frederic Edwin Church , Niagara Falls, from the American Side, 1867 (HTML). National Galleries of Scotland - www.nationalgalleries.org. Date of treatment June 26, 2013. Archived July 1, 2013.