Oil on canvas
Yale University Art Gallery,
Stanley B Resor, BA, 1901, Fund.
> Artist's biography
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In 1852 Church visited Maine, exploring inland areas
characterised by the great American naturalist Henry David Thoreau as 'primal, untamed, and forever
untameable Nature'. From the top of Mount Ktaadn, now spelled 'Katahdin', Thoreau declared:
'Here not even the surface had been scarred by man, but it was a specimen of what God saw fit to make
this world'.
Yet in Church's painting the wilderness is distanced from the viewer by an idyllic settlement with cattle, a
horse and trap and even a large saw mill. No such features existed in the region in 1852, so Church's painting
represents an imaginary vision of a future in which man and nature meet in harmony. |
Room 3: The Still Small Voice
Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)
