The Painter Who Brought The World to New York

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]In this week's Bowery Boys podcast, we chat with award-winning author, professor, and historian Victoria Johnson about her new book on one of the greatest American painters of the 19th century, Frederick Church.

[00:00:15]>> She reveals some of the more unusual and even lifethreatening detours she took during her research process. And we spent about half an hour trying to get out of this lightning storm without getting struck and killed.

[00:00:32]>> The Bowery Boys, episode 485. The painter who brought the world to New York. Hey, it's the Bowery Boys.

[00:00:39]>> Hey Hi there. Welcome to the Bowery Boys.

[00:00:54]This is Greg Young >> and this is Tom Myers. And boy, do we have a fun show today, Greg.

[00:01:00]>> Yes. So, a few years ago, we did a absolutely magical show for our road trip to the Hudson River Valley. That's right. Where we I did a whole show on the Hudson River School. We visited the house of Thomas Cole and this glorious castle on a hill named Olana, the home of one of the most important and one of the most famous American painters of the 19th century, Frederick Church.

[00:01:24]>> That's right. And we had a great response to that show. So many people are fans of landscape painting in the US and the Hudson River School and also both of those historic sites that are both open to visitors and many, many people go every year. Well, today we have the great pleasure of speaking about the very subject of of uh Frederick Church, the painter with the author of a new book called Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederick Church brought the world to America and America to the world. Victoria Johnson is a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College CUNI and the author of the new book Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederick Church brought the world to America and America to the world published this month May 2026 by Scriber. Her previous books include Backstage at the Revolution: How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime, and American Eden, David Hosk, Botney, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic, for which she joined me on the show all the way back in 2018. How is that possible?

[00:02:28]>> It's been a while. Welcome.

[00:02:30]>> Well, you've been working on this book, apparently, right?

[00:02:32]>> Biographies take a long time.

[00:02:34]>> Welcome back to the show.

[00:02:36]>> Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. I loved visiting with you all for American Eden.

[00:02:41]>> Well, I can't believe you just wrote a book about one of the most important and best American artists of the 19th century and you spending all this time with him. So, that's our task today is to unpack this a little bit. And in fact, the way that you open the book is really interesting because it's something that I think a lot of New Yorkers kind of know pretty well, which is like a fabulous gallery opening, right? You've transported us back to spring of 1859 and into Granch Village actually just north of Washington Square and the wrongs of people are heading in to see something that is very magnificent and one of a kind. What is it that they're seeing there and why are people talking about it endlessly afterwards? Well, they were lining up on uh a block between um Fifth and Sixth Avenues on 10th Street >> and all 12,000 people got in that line over uh a couple of weeks and what they were lining up to see was a painting.

[00:03:42]Today it's hard to imagine that many people lining up for one painting but at the time it was I sort of think of it as when I was a kid Star Wars came out >> and it was something you you you realize was so new and alien and thrilling >> that it it swept the country like a fever and in this case it was it was a painting because this was before movies it was before landscape photography uh had really come into its own >> it's almost like cinema itself right before the day before it was invented.

[00:04:13]>> What was this? What was this painting?

[00:04:15]>> Well, it was a landscape that looked like nothing that most people had ever seen. Most of the people who came to see it would never ever get to see this actual landscape. And it was of the Ecuadorian Andes. It was a painting about 10 ft by about 5t. It was huge.

[00:04:36]But more than that, it was framed in this giant window like frame that was 14 ft wide and 12 ft tall.

[00:04:44]>> Almost like you're looking through a window.

[00:04:47]>> Exactly. Yeah.

[00:04:47]>> At this far away and inaccessible place.

[00:04:51]>> Yeah. He and and the the the painter had staged this almost like Barnum would have for um you know a show or or like a panoramic um you know a scrolling panorama or something of a great landscape. And this was really novel to do with paintings. And people paid 25 cents to get into this one studio, this one big gallery. And there were benches lined up like you were going into a theater. People were told ahead of time in newspaper ads to bring opera glasses.

[00:05:24]>> And and the whole thing was this experience that had people some people were in tears. Some people came back over and over. a critic who remembered it later said it was it was a rage. It was all the rage in New York.

[00:05:37]>> The heart of the Andes, right?

[00:05:39]>> Yeah. The painting was called The Heart of the Andes.

[00:05:41]>> And the artist >> And the artist was Frederick Church.

[00:05:45]>> So that's the story that we're unpacking today, right? We're we're we're you've dropped us in and that's how you open up the book >> um with this amazing image of New York with with everybody lining up for that and then we fall back and we get to sort of meet Frederick Church. So before we sort of unpack his story, can you tell us why this was an important story to you? What brought you to this story?

[00:06:08]>> I actually first heard Church's name when I was a little girl. My my father was obsessed with historic preservation and he told me the story of of the saving of Frederick Church's house, Olana, on the Hudson in the 1960s. And then fast forward, I I studied a lot of American art history in college. I came across Church's paintings again. I didn't love them.

[00:06:31]>> Um I preferred some of the other um so-called Hudson River School painters.

[00:06:35]Church, I didn't quite understand why he had gone to South America, why he was painting all these kind of spectacularly detailed grand landscapes. And fast forward some more, quite a bit more. And I when I wrote American Eden, um, which came out in 2018, I spent some time in that book talking about the painter Thomas Cole because David Huzzac, who was the subject of that book, who was a doctor, he ended up starting to become a towards the end of his life a patron of the Hudson, the early Hudson River School. And one of the paintings he bought was Thomas Cole's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, which became one of the most famous paintings in American history.

[00:07:18]And so I I wrote a bit about Cole and I thought what an interesting person and part of the part of the country and part of the story of the arts in in the United States. And then when I was done with that book, giving book talks, a trustee from Moana, Frederick Church's House Museum, saw me give uh some talks and said, "You know, if you're casting around for your next topic, Frederick Church, there's there's no biography of him. There's tons of art historical scholarship, a lot of which has biographical detail, but there's no actual narrative biography of him."

[00:07:52]>> Really?

[00:07:53]>> Yeah. Isn't it kind of surprising? Yeah.

[00:07:55]And so I thought, well, I had already started work on another book proposal and I thought, well, I'll just check out his archives and see if the man himself is really intriguing because you don't want to spend, you know, six years with someone you don't admire or or do. Yeah. I mean, some some writers can do it, but but I like to at least have some some warm feelings towards the person I'm I'm writing about, even though my job is also to recognize all their flaws and and convey those as well. But went to look at the archives and I was so surprised by the personality I found. I expected church to be like his paintings, which is kind of serious and grand and just full of ambition. And I thought that man probably has a massive ego to go with these um stagings, you know, of a single painting and selling tickets and >> because other painters of his period would have egos of that nature.

[00:08:55]>> Yeah. Some some of them would. Yeah. And what I found in the archives in his papers was such a different person. And I found that he was funny. Really really funny. Um >> he loved puns and he made a lot of bad puns, but he >> our kind of guy.

[00:09:12]He was he was really witty. He was he was playful. People always wrote about how playful he was even when he was an older super famous painter.

[00:09:21]>> He had a what a lot of people referred to as a boyish playfulness, kind of mischievous. I learned later that he he really ribbed his mother-in-law. They had kind of a running banter. Um and he was really modest. So people often who who who wrote to him would say, "You never tell me anything about yourself in your letters." He would tell about his friends and and and he wouldn't write about his art either. He he stayed away from that.

[00:09:47]>> But he he just there was a mystery there.

[00:09:50]>> And then I began to learn more about his adventures and his bravery and some of his personal tragedy. And I thought this this man deserves his story to be told.

[00:10:04]>> And were you given access to all of those archives? And you know, did the people at Oana sort of open up archives and materials to you to use?

[00:10:14]>> Yeah, they were they were incredibly generous. They they did exactly what a biographer would would like an institution to do, which is to say, "We're not intervening in any we're not going to try to get you to write anything in particular. This was not a commissioned biography. It was my biography, my project, but they said, "We'll make everything we possibly can available to you."

[00:10:35]>> That's amazing.

[00:10:36]>> So, it was it was dreamy.

[00:10:38]>> And like you just said about the travels. I mean, it's surprising as you get into the book, you realize this is also a 19th century travel book, right?

[00:10:47]And we're on an adventure with him.

[00:10:49]>> But at some point, I think it's right up at the very beginning of the book, you mention that you retraced a lot of these travels as well. So was that part of the research as well?

[00:10:59]>> Yeah. So I started by reading uh I mean there's so much great art historical scholarship and I started by reading that and then I looked I worked through thousands of pages of documents in the archives. But then I went to every place I could that I hadn't already been on his trail because he went all over the world >> and inaccessible sometimes.

[00:11:19]>> Yeah. For him to do what he did in the mid-9th century was kind of extraordinary. I thought I wanted to go in his footsteps so that I specifically so that I could see those landscapes and see and understand better what choices he made as he translated those landscapes to canvas. You know, I did learn a lot about that. But what I learned was something really vital to the whole book, which is that I learned especially from one very particular experience. I learned why church loved giant landscapes and loved painting huge landscapes where where human beings were a tiny tiny part of the landscape. I learned that by feeling like a very tiny piece of a very um scary powerful landscape. But I realized that's when he felt most alive. And for him he was he was a religious man and he felt connected to the creator of the whole cosmos. When he was a tiny speck in a huge landscape that's when he felt he was at his most human paradoxically to be a tiny part of this complex uh world. And my own personal experience with this what really helped me understand why he felt that way and how how alive you can feel when you're in danger. when I was climbing the volcano Codepoxy >> in Ecuador.

[00:12:37]>> In Ecuador, it's a volcano that's over 19,000 ft and I was up there with two companions at um about 16,000 ft getting close to the glacier line. We got caught in a lightning storm and we were so high up it was it was more of a lightning field and the lightning was kind of going sideways. Oh.

[00:12:58]>> Um, and we were we were the only ones that high at that point on the mountain.

[00:13:04]There had been other people and, you know, lower down. And we spent about half an hour trying to get out of this lightning storm without getting struck and killed. And one of my companions, you know, he's wearing a winter cap. It was cold up there. and his hat was actually blown off his head by what was probably a blast of superheated air from a lightning bolt that hit somewhere else. He didn't actually get struck by lightning, but his hat got blown 20 ft off his head.

[00:13:36]>> Mhm.

[00:13:37]>> Terrifying.

[00:13:37]>> It was I've never been so terrified in my life. And it went on and on and on because we're trying to get down this mountain for half an hour. And when I got when we all got to the parking lot at the bottom and I stopped shaking.

[00:13:50]Actually, I didn't stop shaking for a while and I it still makes me a little shaky to tell the story because it was so visceral, but my hair was, you know, my hair was longer than it is now. And it was standing on end for an hour afterwards. I have I have a picture >> from the static of it all from the from No, >> it looked like fright, but it was, you know, my body was charged with electricity. Oh my gosh. And you know once I I recovered from the kind of excitement I realized this is what church was feeling and trying to transmit in his paintings was this sense that we are so lucky to be part of this extraordinarily complex and exciting cosmos >> and you really feel that in those moments and in those huge huge landscapes. So the travel really really was enlightening >> enlightening. Yes. So, the book release is actually corresponding with the anniversary of the 200th year of his birth, right, in 1826, which is very exciting. But I want to actually kind of skip past some of these early years and get to something that's extremely important that happened in when he was 18 years old, and that was becoming an apprentice to extremely interesting man that you already mentioned earlier named Thomas Cole. Can you give us a little bit more about Cole and like why he was so influential to church and really in creating the landscapes that you just described?

[00:15:16]>> Yeah. Well, Thomas Cole was Britishborn, but he immigrated to the United States when he was in his teens with his family. And he he was really talented painter and a New York patron suggested that Cole go upstate from New York City and check out this beautiful region of the Catskills. And Cole went up there and just fell in love. I mean, he was a man who was really passionate about nature. He he found incredible subject matter in the Catskills and ended up settling there. He he married and settled down in the town of Catskill at a really beautiful farm called Cedar Grove. And today that's the Thomas Cole National Historic Site. And it's it's really wonderful.

[00:15:58]>> Surrounded by beautiful mountains. We did a road trip there a couple years ago, right? Yeah. And Cole was considered um because of the work he had done particularly in the 1820s and 30s he was considered the greatest landscape painter in the United States. He didn't usually take students but Church who grew up in Hartford, Connecticut just obsessively drew from an early age. He just could not stop drawing on everything. My favorite anecdote about church as a young as a kid is that he he was writing penmanship exercises, practicing his calligraphy, and he stopped and drew a picture of a pen, a man, and a ship. And then he drew a bunch of cool pens. He just everything everything he was writed into images. He just thought he had >> So his parents wanted him to be a businessman like Church's father. and Church was unable to stop drawing. And he was really talented. And so a family friend said, "Let me write to Thomas Cole." And Cole agreed to take Church as a student at the age of 18. And and Church spent two years there. And it it made him as as a as a young painter.

[00:17:09]>> But Colt was a landscape painter. I mean, he was known for his landscapes.

[00:17:13]>> Yeah. So was it just assumed then that this young church was going to be learning landscape painting or were there other options available to him?

[00:17:22]>> There were other options and in fact the other options were more respectable if you if you had to become a painter historical >> historical painting like you know think of John Trumbull's famous Declaration of Independence um painting and and portraiture. So those kinds of paintings were more reputable, but Church was just just too passionate about landscape. And he started out doing a couple of history paintings, but pretty soon the people disappeared from his paintings unless you know they were tiny.

[00:17:52]>> And so obviously um Cole saw that Church had a lot of talents. He believed in him. How did Cole actually helped launch his career then in New York City?

[00:18:02]Because then this story goes right to New York.

[00:18:05]>> Yeah. So after two years of of studying uh with with Cole Church um first moves back to Hartford but he didn't stay long because he really needed to get to what he felt was the center of of the art world and he moved to New York City which his parents hated because it was filled with vice >> temptation it was expensive >> and the year is >> um this is 1847 >> so he moves to New York and and Col was part of an an institution called the National Academy of Design. and which Cole had helped found. And that was the place, you know, they had an annual spring show and that's where you wanted to get your art in and show it to possible buyers. And Cole helped Church show his first painting there and Church immediately attracted attention.

[00:18:52]>> This was Twilight Among the Mountains, which is a Hudson Valley painting. It's a scene from the from the Hudson Valley.

[00:18:58]>> Yeah. Yeah. That's one of a whole series of paintings that were inspired by Cole and painted um scenes beloved of Cole along the Catskill Creek along the Hudson River and it's really an exquisite painting and it's just amazing that Church did it when he was so young.

[00:19:15]>> Just take a step back to kind like to look at the landscape of Church in New York and the painting world. How did even regular people conceive of art?

[00:19:25]Like was this again we sort of referred to it as being like a like a film or something like an IMAX or something but was there like a scene of like regular New Yorkers going to see paintings and or was it something a little more rarified?

[00:19:39]>> It it was both. I mean there were there were two major institutions and one was sort of more rarified and the other had a free gallery in exactly for that purpose to to make it art more accessible to even laborers with with no disposable income to go pay the 25 cents to get into the National Academy of Design. There was this other institution called the American Art Union that had a free gallery packed with paintings and people would come in all day long from from all walks of life. There was a sense on the part of the founders of both the National Academy and the American Art Union that exposure to art was refining and it was good for democracy and you know it was also good to signal to Europe that we are not you know a backwards country that's never ever going to reach the level of European culture. Of course, this is also before any of the major art museums or I don't know if there were really any. I guess there were private museums that had art in them at this time, but obviously this predates the Mets and other of the major cultural institutions today. So, it was a totally different scene.

[00:20:41]>> Yeah, that those were the the places you saw art in a couple of other small galleries, private galleries. And even just the idea of a landscape is still kind of new just for like a a general New Yorker that there would have been maybe 20 years before just you know like they would have been assembled in other museums but so here it just seems like for the first time this is where New York is really rising to a kind of level to try to rival Europe I think right >> yeah the the landscape was an established um genre in Europe and practiced with great sophistication and with Thomas Koh's ascent and then um that of his student and friend Asher Durant.

[00:21:21]>> Landscape painting began to to take on more uh more allure, more respectability and it also it also helped show Americans how beautiful their their land was, their their countryside. And it was a way of showing of showing Europe we can draw on our own subject matter to create excellent paintings. And it took a while for Europe to acknowledge to agree. And Church was one of the catalysts in European opinion changing particularly British opinion changing about American painting.

[00:21:57]>> And that goes into the subtitle of your book. How the artist brought the world to America and America to the world.

[00:22:02]>> Yeah.

[00:22:02]>> Church has now established himself in New York.

[00:22:05]Now he's ready to look larger to actually set off for the world. Church goes where few painters have gone before. right after this >> before we we take church on the road here for some amazing travel and so much of the book is fascinating travel in South America and then throughout Europe and the Middle East in the 1850s60s and '7s which is just such an interesting time to read about as well. There's a lot of New York history in this book and it's so fun how you brought that to life around the story of Frederick Church.

[00:22:45]What was Church's life? I mean, you say he lived with, I think, family or friends of the family around Union Square, something like that. What was sort of his New York experience?

[00:22:56]>> Well, he he lived sort of between Union Square and Lower Broadway. That was his his circuit. He had family. He had an uncle who lived near Union Square and that's where he started out and then for work he would go down Broadway to sort of around Broom and Grand and go to the art union studio he was renting. The National Academy of Design was down at Leonard and Broadway.

[00:23:18]>> And so that was that was kind of his circuit.

[00:23:21]>> His circuit was kind of like canal up to Union Square on Broadway sort of.

[00:23:26]>> I mean he was also in his 20s in New York City in the 1850s.

[00:23:31]Was he going over the tenderloin? Was he having fun?

[00:23:34]>> You know, we we don't know how much fun he actually had. Um, it was not recorded, but I think he was a pretty straight laced guy. He certainly came from from a very strict family. Um, his parents were always writing him letters reminding him, you know, not to indulge in vice and make sure he kept his place in heaven. And >> he was devout.

[00:23:56]>> He was devout. Yeah. He wasn't as devout as his parents. Um and he found his connection to God in nature. So he did go to church regularly. One of his friends later said that the church's kind of Christianity was more the gospel of love and it was less kind of fire and brimstone.

[00:24:14]>> But his parents were descended from Puritans and they were you know very concerned about his moral standing.

[00:24:20]>> So who knows what he got up to. My impression of him is that that he was um >> I mean his name is Church.

[00:24:26]>> Yeah. So he, you know, was probably pretty straight laced, >> but there is a interesting situation where he's painting about landscapes, but living in the city. So how did he stay in touch with nature, especially up like say in the Hudson Valley >> while he was down in the city, >> and record that in a way that he'd be able to reproduce back in the the studio? So Church would every summer and into the fall um like a lot of artists would kind of close up his studio and go out into New England and you know he you'd read these bulletins in the in the newspaper saying you know Kenz's gone to New Hampshire and church has gone to upstate New York and you know everybody would just kind of bolt and they would go out with their sketchbooks and you know there was a lot of pl air sketching in pencil but also oil sketches right >> and those kind of quick records church had learned from Cole to label his pictures with he would put little numbers on on one corner with labels for colors for example and then he would put a a two on a cloud and then two would correspond to like puffy white >> like a legend.

[00:25:38]>> Yeah.

[00:25:39]>> Sophisticated color by numbers if you will.

[00:25:42]>> And Church was blessed with two things.

[00:25:44]One, Cole said he had quote the finest eye for drawing in the world. So he could very quickly capture the essence of something, you know, with flies, you know, and mosquitoes around his head and out in in a field. Yeah. He sometimes he had to tie scarves and wear gloves because he was getting bitten. But he was really good. And some of his fellow artists said they'd never seen anything like it. His capacity for looking at a landscape and just and getting it in in pencil or in oil paints, you know, a sketch. And the Cooper Hewitt here in New York has thousands of churches pencil sketches and hundreds of his oil sketches. Oh wow. Most of them have been digitized. And his oil sketches are a revelation because that's where he's he's making these images that are so fresh. They some of them even remind me of Monae. They were preparatory for a more finished painting. They have this freshness and immediiacy. And church would bring all of that. The I said he was blessed with an eye for drawing, but he was also blessed with an unbelievable memory, visual memory. He could he could he could remember the exact color of a rock, you know, that he had seen 6 months earlier and paint correspondingly. So he he just had these gifts and so he would go out in the summers and falls and come back to the studio and paint all winter.

[00:26:59]>> And in the travel we're talking about that's what he would bring back too would be snapshots basically.

[00:27:04]>> Yeah. once he got out of the United States into these more exotic locations.

[00:27:09]Can you just give us a quick recap of some of those first trips? Cuz he I mean he travels an extraordinary amount for someone in the 1850s which is like it's it's hard to travel now to some of these places. So to think of this is incredible. So where did he first go for some painting inspiration?

[00:27:24]>> Well, first I mean you know he was all over New England. He was very proud of being from New England. He really cared about the principles of kind of anti- monarchical and self-sufficiency. these these democratic principles that the the United States was founded on and he painted a lot of those in his paintings.

[00:27:40]He celebrated that those values painting farmers and so on and then he went to the American South and that was his first trip kind of further a field. That was interesting.

[00:27:52]>> Who did he go with >> cuz that's a whole thing too.

[00:27:55]>> Uh Cyrus Field >> amazing.

[00:27:58]>> Yes.

[00:27:58]>> Famous for the Atlantic cable among other things. years later.

[00:28:02]But still, it's just amazing. This is an example of how you wo >> New York history into the story.

[00:28:10]>> Yeah. When I'm, you know, when I'm reading biography, my favorite thing is to see these other people walking through the story. And, you know, to feel that I'm walking down the New York City streets and I can see it and smell it. And so I really try hard to do that in in my writing so that you're you're in New York and and you're you're seeing people like Church's friends like Cyrus Field and people who are Asher Durant, you know, these these major figures.

[00:28:35]>> Even Osborne who would be his patron >> William Henry Osborne. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:39]Railroad executive who became his best friend and patron. So, so Church went south to Virginia and Kentucky um with Cyrus Field and Field was taking Phil Field already owned a painting or two by Church and and wanted to commission him on these trips, you know, they would go and Field did get a really great painting from Church out of the the trip to the American South, this painting, the natural bridge of a Virginia landmark. Then Field and Church went to South America and right before they left, Fields increased his life insurance >> wisely.

[00:29:16]>> Well, you never know.

[00:29:17]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:18]>> And it would not be his only trip to South America and the trips would just continue from there and these were dangerous and you go through in detail.

[00:29:27]I mean, your anecdote about your friend getting the the hat blown off him sounds almost like something that you wrote about in this because there's really vivid descriptions of the travailes of these incredible voyages. What was driving church? Like what was the philosophy that was making him want to go to these kind of dangerous places in the first place? Well, I mean there were a couple things, but the the main thing was I mean you have to remember this is before landscape photography really could capture any I mean there were great dgera types of people but landscape just could not be captured and church read along with you know thousands of other people a book that changed his life and the book was Alexander Fon Humbult's cosmos which started coming out in it was five volumes and all started coming out in 1845 Humbult had traveled in 1804 four in South America and in New Granada, now Colombia and and then also in Ecuador.

[00:30:25]And Homebolt had written in volume two of Cosmos, which was his treatise on the I mean on so many different fields, but on the complexity of nature. Humble had written about that he really needed craved a great landscape painter who would go to South America and capture the true complexity of these landscapes that they had every kind of ecosystem just compacted into a small area. And if a painter could go and capture that and and he said only a painter not a scientist only a painter can really capture the exact blue of the sky and the the vapory mist on the volcanoes.

[00:31:01]And homeboat I mean church read this and he lined he wrote a pencil line down the side and then he goes off to South America note note to self here it is and in terms of the cosmos I mean homebolt's one of his thesis correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't it that that man is not the center of the cosmos it's nature >> it's nature and it's it's this complex globe spanning web and >> we just happen to be here >> yeah exactly >> now I know we teased the Andes We're about to get to the Andes, but I just want to make one stop over another really fascinating place that he painted, which was Niagara Falls. To me, it's one of my favorite and also like the most famous to me when I think of him. But like he was painting Niagara Falls in the mid 1850s. What was Niagara Falls? Because like most of us can't picture it without like tourism, right?

[00:31:51]But it was like sort of like right before that was beginning to happen, >> you know? There was a lot of tourism to Niagara Falls, but there was, it's kind of hard to think about, but there was also tons of industry right around Niagara Falls. But even with all of that, people would go to Niagara Falls, and I think it still happens today. But for the 19th century, going to Niagara Falls when you've never seen it in an engraving or something. And going standing there, it was it was the embodiment of the sublime. this idea that nature is huge and terrifying and that terrifying is thrilling >> and and it also symbolized kind of the ungovernable wildness of the United States that that some people like to be proud of. Um >> for church, you know, he had painted a waterfall before that and Colombian waterfall and a critic said like he shouldn't paint falling water. He can't do it. So what does he do? He goes and paints he he goes and starts sketching at Niagara Falls over and over and over.

[00:32:44]He makes all these trips. He said to a friend when he was at Nigara Falls, he always felt fidgety as a wildcat because he wanted to run out of his hotel room and catch every slant of light, the moonlight, the clouds. And he ended up painting this extraordinary picture, 7 ft long and 2 ft high. And one critic said it's it is Niagara all but the roaring of the water. So he showed the world that he could paint falling water >> and and make it terrifying, too, right?

[00:33:12]Didn't he paint it in a way that made you feel like you were going to go over the >> In his preparatory sketch, he had a rock at the bottom and then in the in the actual painting when visitors came into this again and he showed it by himself in one room charge of admission and you went in and there's 7 ft ac in front of you and no rock. It's just the water.

[00:33:34]You were right at the edge of the water and the water's rushing right over the falls. It's Horseshoe Falls and it was it was electrifying for people and it went over to to England and it was the moment when the British said, "Oh, >> okay.

[00:33:49]>> Great great art can come from American artists and from American subject matter >> and he he became incredibly famous both in Great Britain and United States." But at about the same time that Niagara goes on view, he's back down in South America because he has this other vision that he wants to capture. Which brings us to the beginning of our show. We're coming full >> full circle here. Can you tell us uh where he went?

[00:34:14]>> Okay. So, he went back to South America because he had decided, you know, I now I understand I've I've used all my sketches from my first trip to South America in 1853. I need to go back and and get better views of the volcanoes that were in the clouds and and now I have the talent to to paint falling water to paint volcanoes to paint sky and he just needed more sketches. So he goes on another fourmonth trip um >> dangerous of course etc. Kodapoxy, Chimberazzo, these incredible volcanoes.

[00:34:44]And he comes back and goes into he moved to a new studio then, fantastic new building called the 10th Street Studio building, the first purpose-built artist studio building in the country.

[00:34:55]>> Richard Morris Hunt.

[00:34:56]>> Richard Morris Hunt. He moves in there, starts painting, and for a year everybody's, you know, waiting for his painting. And he's very good at hyping people up. He says like, "Please don't interrupt me." You know, he said that in a newspaper. Yeah, it was just a little bulletin in the newspaper, you know, and a a little piece about the arts and it said, you know, and and and and Mr. Church is busy and will not be as available to visitors, which was, you know, really brilliant marketing and he was really good at that. And after a year, he unveils the heart of the Andes and and people just go wild. I mean, nobody had ever seen a landscape like that. And when it goes on display in 1859 and they're lining up as we read in the beginning of the book, he is making money in a couple of ways. He's a very savvy businessman too, right? Like he had sold the the the painting, but there were other deals mixed in with it as well.

[00:35:51]>> Yeah, he was really good at this. And I think he learned it from his businessman father. He did make good money from his art. He made deals like he he would license the image for a chromolithograph.

[00:36:03]He made a deal where, you know, if he could find a a buyer for a higher price, he could get that. Yeah. So, he he was really good at diversifying the income streams out of one one image. Um, and the engravings sold very well. And it's kind of extraordinary how beautiful the engravings are.

[00:36:22]>> Well, and he not only made money from the engravings, but it also helped his reputation, >> right? I mean, then then it's being, you know, his his works are being shown all over the United States and in people's parlors and yeah >> and so then by the end of the civil war Frederick Church is one of the most respected painters in all the country right but of course perhaps one of his most intriguing creations is about to arrive in the form of his home we'll get to Alana and more Europe right after this >> but he wasn't only making money and becoming more famous because of the heart of the Andes In 1859, he also met somebody pretty important.

[00:37:06]>> Yeah. It was at the heart of the Andes exhibition that he saw this beautiful young woman and went up and started talking to her and she was with her mother. She was accompanied of course and her name was Isabelle KS and she was visiting from Dayton, Ohio.

[00:37:20]>> All right.

[00:37:20]>> And she she and church fell in love that he he started courting her and and they were married the following summer of 1860. And then they build a life together. But like they also significantly build an extraordinary house together. One of the most extraordinary houses on the Hudson River, which is of course Alana, which you can still visit.

[00:37:44]So what is the story behind that house?

[00:37:46]Why didn't you build it something more cozy like Thomas Cole's house across the water? church bought this property um on the Hudson River across from Thomas Cole's house, Cedar Grove, soon after getting married and built Cozy Cottage, this tiny little cottage where they lived uh together, he and Isabelle, and started a family. But then in the 1860s after the Civil War, they went to Europe together, to the Middle East, where church was gathering more material for sketches and to Europe, to Rome. And when they came back, they had both become obsessed with the beauty of artifacts from all over the world. And they were collecting and collecting.

[00:38:25]They came back with a lot of artifacts.

[00:38:26]And they also came back with design ideas for this new house that nobody had seen anything like. And he in the 1870s, early 1870s, church designs, some with Isabelle's help and working with the architect Calvert Vox designs. There's almost no words for it. There's nothing like it.

[00:38:47]>> Super high on a hill. It's like it's unlike any piece of architecture in in the region over the beautiful over the beautiful Hudson River.

[00:38:56]>> And it's an amalgam, you point out, of these travels, but it seems that he was particularly inspired by the Middle East >> and by Damascus and Beirut.

[00:39:06]>> Yeah. He he was so taken uh first with the the solidity of houses in the Middle East for they lived in in in Beirut for some months and he he loved the the solidity of them and also the fact that they were organized around a courtyard.

[00:39:21]He loved that kind of feeling that the courtyard was the the heart of the family and the heart of the home. And he he wanted to recreate that feeling, that enduring domestic place where he could house his growing family and and protect them and keep them safe and honor his newfound love of all these other cultures and and traditions. It is very interesting. You know, you take us as well to the Alps into Austria, there's Europe, down into Italy, and it's funny that he's sort of like, eh, Rome, he's not really into he actually seems to be annoyed by all of the Americans who seem to be about.

[00:40:01]Yeah, he was definitely annoyed at the tourists and >> and like he couldn't find the time to paint, but also he wasn't terribly impressed by the ruins as opposed to what he found in in >> what happened to church in the Middle East was was a discovery of the most ancient cultures. He loved the desert.

[00:40:19]He loved the rock. He loved the feeling that he was in when he was traveling across the desert to Petra, to the ancient city Petra, that he was just on the bare face of the planet. And that that was so moving to him in a completely different way from the lushness of the of the tropics. And after that, Europe just seemed kind of fake and overdone and not not that vital stripped away >> ancient essence.

[00:40:46]>> So describing him as this worldly painter and in fact it's in the title of your book is very interesting that he is one of the best known Hudson River School painters. And this wasn't even a phrase that was used that often in his lifetime, right? I mean, I mean, does he really even like properly apply to this group? Cuz it does seem like he's someone kind of like of of a much more masterful talent and like scope than many of his contemporaries.

[00:41:14]>> Yeah. The Hudson River School label was coined in the 1870s. And at first it was a compliment and it was sort of as as critics were looking back and seeing that generation that was inspired by Thomas school get older and um new new movements were emerging in the United States. You know, it was kind of a compliment this beautiful old style. But then it started to be used critically.

[00:41:35]So it was an insult to say the Hudson River School. So like old and fusty and we need and you know American Impressionism is coming in and we need fresh young artists and it never really worked for Church anyway because he moved to Hudson and he was you know toana right south of the town of Hudson right across from Cedar Grove and he was so associated with Cole he got lumped into that and he did paint the Hudson River but he was a global artist there there's no way that church can be captured by the phrase Hudson River school artist, >> right? And so interesting that he was up against well there was competition in terms of the new impressionist and the impressionism exhibit that came to New York while he was still alive. He had a competitor as well as sort of friendnemy at least in the press wanted that to happen with Beerat and the fact that the two of them would be both displayed during this incredible fundraiser for the um the Union Army during the Civil War. It's the exact configuration, I think, that still exists today in the Metropolitan Museum. If you head in, you see Beers's landscape of the American West facing the heart of the Andes, which is really once you know your story that you've told here, really is powerful to walk into that room and see it like >> Yeah. The Met chose to recreate the way those paintings had been hung in the 1864 fair that raised money for the Union Army. And you know, Beerstat and Church were were friendly, but one of their friends said, "I don't think they adore each other." And they kind of divided up the world in the way because Albert Beerat went and painted the West and Church just didn't do it. Once Beer had kind of made his mark with the those paintings, Church went to the Middle East.

[00:43:24]>> The Church died in the year 1900, but he had been sick for so long. And it's truly tragic the illness which became which came over him in the 1870s. What was the illness and how long it had been had it been developing?

[00:43:38]>> It was rheumatoid arthritis. And it first he got sick when he was in Rome.

[00:43:43]He had a kind of what he described as a boil on his hand when he was on the way to Rome. And it's probably that was you know in the late 1860s that was when it first was coming on him. And it ended up crippling him over the 1870s. you know, he's only in his 50s and his hand started his painting hand um his right hand started kind of turning into a bit of a claw, you know, was kind of brittle and and stuck. One of his friends wrote to him and said, "I heard your there was a newspaper article saying his hand was going to be amputated." And Church Church wrote and said, "No, no, no, that's not true." But he could barely write and he for a long time he could paint and he really kept painting. And there's a picture in the book, extraordinary photograph of Church towards the end of his life painting and he's there are a couple of men watching him in the background and he's painting and you can see this kind of gnarled hand with a paintbrush stuck through it.

[00:44:38]>> But just as he was when he was a little boy, he just cannot stop making images even when it's he's in pain. And he kept painting for the rest of his life. And some of those paintings even under these conditions were quite accomplishing. Did the sickness have anything to do with how he was making his paints? I mean, do you think that there's any chance that he poisoned himself along the way?

[00:44:59]>> A rheumatologist wrote an article in the 20th century kind of speculating that it's possible that the lead in the paints had had some effect on this, but we just we just don't know. There were painters who who poisoned themselves.

[00:45:12]There was one who showed up in the newspaper as a having died because he pulled his he cleaned his brushes kind of >> pulled them through his his his mouth when he was maybe when he was painting and and he died of poisoning.

[00:45:26]>> And at Alana though, even though he was sick, even though he was having a hard time painting, they were still hosting, right? They were hosting some really notable names in Gilded Age, New York.

[00:45:37]>> Did Mark Twain did Mark Twain go to Alana? That is like a perfect night out, right?

[00:45:43]>> Wouldn't you like to be on that piaza sitting looking over the Hudson listening to Mark Twain and Frederick Church talk? And there was a a friend of Mark Twain was there that night and said in her recollection afterward that Mark Twain is quote the greatest circus I was ever at.

[00:46:03]So it would have been a fun evening.

[00:46:04]Well, and Mark Twain had also, you know, written The Innocence Abroad, and he had taken Americans >> much to talk about.

[00:46:10]>> He had taken Americans to the world and the world to Americans as well. They had a lot in common, but he did not I love that you pointed out that he was not interested in the Asters and the Vanderbilts. His guests were having fun.

[00:46:21]They were doing like wheelbarrow races and just sort of like joking around.

[00:46:25]>> Yeah, he loved country life and he he wrote a friend that that the wealthy are bllights on the fun of country life. And you know, he did have rich friends. I mean, there's no question he had somewhat of room up there for will bear racism.

[00:46:39]>> You need church to get into season 4 of Gilded Age. We're going to have to talk to somebody about this.

[00:46:44]>> Let's do it. I can help with casting.

[00:46:47]>> I guess today if listeners wanted to experience church for themselves, they can obviously head to the Metropolitan Museum and into that room. Are there any suggestions or tips you might have for listeners aside from reading your book Glorious Country to get closer to church and to understand the subject?

[00:47:06]>> The the place to go is Olana. It it was preserved so fully because he he died in 1900, but his son and daughter-in-law lived there. Then his son died and the daughter-in-law kept it intact as it was when Church was alive. They barely changed anything and it was preserved.

[00:47:23]And so when you walk into that house, it feels like church just walked out.

[00:47:26]>> It's extraordinary. And it's a whole designed landscape that church oversaw.

[00:47:31]It's it's it's an exquisite place. And I've been going there for 10 years. And it's it I've never seen it in such beautiful condition of of restoration as it is both landscape and house as it is right now. And if you really want to experience Frederick Church, go to Kodapoxy and get caught in a lightning storm.

[00:47:50]We're going to leave that to you because you're the author here. The book is Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederick Church brought the world to America and America to the world.

[00:47:59]>> I mean, I can see bringing the world to America, but you would also say he brought America to the world, right?

[00:48:05]>> Yeah. In his paintings of North and South America, which, you know, made their way across the Atlantic, but also in the sense that he changed the way European critics thought about American painting. Victoria Johnson, thank you so much for being on the show today.

[00:48:19]>> Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back.

[00:48:20]>> Oh, it's so good to see you and congratulations on the book and like it's so wonderful that it's coming out 200th anniversary of this birth. Thank you very much.

[00:48:28]>> Thank you.

[00:48:32]>> Please check out our website bryboyhistory.com where guess what? maybe a few of the paintings we've talked about in today's show and we will also have a select number on social media and of course information on the book Glorious Country. Um, of course you can find us there on Instagram, threads, blue sky.

[00:48:51]Oh, blue skies. I think uh I think uh cerillion blue and yes so many places to join us. Also over on patreon.com/boweryboys where for a small monthly donation we uh will give you access to Side Streets, the Patreon only show where we take you behind the scenes of recording the show and take you down little side alleys tangents.

[00:49:13]>> Yes. and as well as classic episodes of the Barry Boys ad free once a week. So it's like if you want to hear the old versions of us like I'm sorry the younger versions of us listen to them on Patreons. I guess we're the older versions. Sorry I maybe I should have said that differently. Anyway, um please visit us uh and please check out all of that on patreon.com/boweryboys.

[00:49:38]Also, head over to bowyboywalks.com where we have small group walking tours all over the city explaining the city's history. You can walk through time with us over at Bowery Boy Walks. We even have a guilded age art tour that mentions Frederick Church through the Metropolitan Museum with none other than the Gilded Gentleman himself, Carl Raymond. And there are the the Gilded Age mansions of Fifth Avenue tour up and down Fifth Avenue. And I believe that there were some Hudson River School paintings hanging on those very walls.

[00:50:10]So join us walkthrough time with us over at boweryboywalks.com.

[00:50:14]>> Finally, check out that old show. This is actually a perfect companion to what you just heard. Um that show is our road trip to the Hudson River Valley, the Hudson River School. This episode was produced and edited by Kieran Ganon.

[00:50:28]>> So thank you so much for joining us on this very special interview with Victoria Johnson. Have a great New York week whether you live here or not.

[00:50:36]>> See you real soon.