Twilight in the Wilderness

Twilight in the Wilderness
Icebergs floating in an ocean
Artist Frederic Edwin Church
Year 1860
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 101.6 cm × 162.6 cm (40.0 in × 64.0 in)
Location Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, US
Website Cleveland Museum of Art
Sanford Robinson Gifford's A Twilight in the Catskills (1861)

Twilight in the Wilderness is an 1860 oil painting by American painter Frederic Edwin Church. The woodlands of the northeastern United States are shown against a setting sun that intensely colors the sky and altocumulus clouds, which reflect off the river or lake. It is highly detailed and shows the influence of J. M. W. Turner in its coloration.[1] The sky is painted in skillful gradations of purples, oranges, and yellows.[2] Improved oil colors may have helped Church achieve the effect. Church scholar John K. Howat describes the painting as "one of his finest ever"[3] and as "the single most impressive example of Church's depictions of unsullied North American woodlands and their most famous representation in nineteenth-century painting".[4]

Painted during a time of increasing American interest in unspoiled nature—Thoreau's Walden was published in 1854—there are no signs of human activity in this landscape; the only life of any kind is a small bird perched at left. Like many of Church's paintings, the picture is likely a composite of sketches taken in the field, especially in Maine, which he visited often. He travelled many times in the 1850s to Mount Desert Island and Mount Katahdin, then an especially remote area.[2]

Twilight in the Wilderness was commissioned for William T. Walters. In 1860 the painting was exhibited from June 8 to July 25 at Goupil's in New York City.[5] It was well received, with contemporary viewers relating its purity of nature with spirituality. Critics described it as a "scene unhistoric, with no other interest than that of a wilderness, without human association of any kind" and "Nature with folded hands, kneeling at her evening prayer".[1] For receptive viewers, the painting contains discrete religious symbols: the tree stump is a "wilderness altar" on which there is a small cross formed of wood splinters; the three trees that frame the scene at right symbolize the three crosses at Calvary. Church scholar David C. Huntington suggests that the small cloud fragment, located on the diagonal of the tree stump, evokes the "Dove of the Holy Spirit".[1] Others saw "merely" nature, such as the Cosmopolitan Art Journal, which called it "unworthy of the artist, being a mere piece of scene painting, which it was a vanity to exhibit".[2]

The American wilderness and turbulent sky pictured here, as night descends, have been interpreted apocalyptically, as a metaphor for a country falling into discord on the brink of the Civil War. In this context, the painting is considered patriotic. Sanford Robinson Gifford's A Twilight in the Catskills (1860) is viewed similarly.[6]

References

Notes
  1. 1 2 3 Sweeney, 57
  2. 1 2 3 Howat (1987), 252
  3. ↑ Howat (2005), 99
  4. ↑ Howat (1987), 251–252
  5. ↑ Kelly, 164
  6. ↑ Greenhalgh, Adam (2001). "'Darkness Visible': A Twilight in the Catskills by Sanford Robinson Gifford". American Art Journal. 32 (1/2): 45–75. doi:10.2307/1594639.
Sources
  • Howat, John K. (1987). "Twilight in the Wilderness". American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School. Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 9780870994975.
  • Howat, John K.; Church, Frederic Edwin (2005). Frederic Church. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300109887.
  • Kelly, Franklin (1989). Frederic Edwin Church. National Gallery of Art. ISBN 978-0874744583.
  • Sweeney, J. Gray (1989). "The Nude of Landscape Painting: Emblematic Personification in the Art of the Hudson River School". Smithsonian Studies in American Art. 3 (4): 43–65.
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