Book Review
Victoria Johnson’s biography offers a nuanced exploration of Frederic Edwin Church, an artist whose landscapes captured the complex emotions of a nation grappling with slavery, war, and division.
Frederic Edwin Church, “The River of Light” (1877), oil on canvas (image courtesy the National Gallery of Art)
According to Susan Sontag, great writers fall into two categories: husbands and lovers. She describes husbands as embodying “reliability, intelligibility, generosity, decency,” while lovers are imbued with passion. Frederic Edwin Church, a 19th-century American painter, defies this dichotomy. Despite his husbandly responsibilities, he retained the adventurous spirit of a romantic. His wife Isabel might have preferred less excitement, as Church often embarked on thrilling escapades, such as climbing Andean volcanoes or navigating Arctic icebergs. Surprisingly, it is only now that Church, a figure of such intrigue, has been the focus of a comprehensive biography. Victoria Johnson’s Glorious Country (2026) is a fitting tribute to this remarkable individual.
Church’s adventurous nature was evident from an early age. He gained prominence by expanding the Hudson River School’s artistic vision beyond its American roots. These initial painters, especially his mentor Thomas Cole, celebrated the vast and untouched landscapes of America, urging preservation amid industrialization. Church built upon this legacy by introducing a sense of wonder and drama, bringing global vistas to a New York eager to shed its colonial past. His exhibitions, such as the renowned “Heart of the Andes” (1859) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, captivated audiences with their novel-like complexity and scientific depth. This painting aimed to encapsulate the entirety of nature in one image.
Despite his grand ambitions, Church’s work was never overly theatrical. During and before the Civil War, his landscapes subtly reflected the nation’s anxieties about slavery, conflict, and division, using evocative imagery of clouds and trees.
Johnson’s biography is an efficient and engaging account of Church’s life, marked by both achievements and personal struggles. She delves into the sorrow of losing two children within days, Church’s battle with physical ailments that hindered his later artistic output, and the changing tastes that rendered him a relic by his life’s end. Johnson places Church within the broader narrative of 19th-century America, a nation in flux. Through his art, Church not only captured the nation’s questions of the past but also those that persist today.
Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World (2026) by Victoria Johnson is published by Scribner and available online and through independent booksellers.
