In the decades prior to the creation of film, the unveiling of large-scale paintings took the place of mass entertainment media events. Landscape subjects were the most popular, so when someone like Frederic Edwin Church premiered a new painting of South America, it was with the requisite fanfare in salons fully bedecked in potted palms, velvet drapes, complimentary artifacts, live musical performances and special effects lighting, all to provide a sense of a window into a world far away from that of attendees. Church was a member of the Hudson River School of painters and only student of school founder Thomas Cole. Born in England, Cole moved to the United States and was further moved by the beauty of the Hudson River. In response he formed an artistic collective based in representational naturalism, Romanticism and luminism, or the manipulation of lighting effects.
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| The Heart of the Andes by Frederic Edwin Church (1859) |
Cole did revel in landscape work, but he also sought to combine these epic paintings with narrative and metaphorical themes. The foremost of these is a five-painting series entitled The Course of Empire. Created between 1833 and 1836, these masterworks chart the course of a classical civilization from it's birth to its decay, reflecting the philosophical ideals of the Hudson River School, Romanticism, and the still-young American nation.
