The Heart of the Andes
The Heart of the Andes is a large oil-on-canvas landscape painting by the American artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). It depicts an idealized landscape in the South American Andes, where Church traveled on two occasions. Measuring more than five feet (1.5 meters) high and almost ten feet (3 meters) wide, its New York City exhibition in 1859 was a sensation, establishing Church as the foremost landscape painter in the United States. The painting was later exhibited by itself in other eastern U.S. cities. The exhibition rooms featured special lighting and decorative elements reminiscent of the depicted landscape, and the painting was supported by a floor-standing frame. The public was often enchanted by the amount of detail portrayed in it, willing to wait in line and pay a 25-cent entrance fee. Church synthesized numerous topographies of the Andes into his composition, from Mount Chimborazo to a plain and a jungle. In the details, there are numerous animals and indications of human settlement, including people visiting a cross in the left foreground. The Heart of the Andes has been in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1909. Its first sale, to William Tilden Blodgett, broke a price record for a living American artist. It is among Church's most renowned works and an important 19th-century American painting. Background In 1853 and 1857, Church traveled in Ecuador and Colombia, financed by businessman Cyrus West Field, who wished to use Church's paintings to lure investors to his South American ventures. Church was inspired by the Prussian naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, and his 1845 treatise Kosmos. Humboldt was among the last of the great scientific generalists, and his fame became similar to that of Albert Einstein a century later. In the second volume of Kosmos, Humboldt described the influence of landscape painting on the study of the natural world—holding that art is among the highest expressions of the love of nature—and challenging artists to portray the "physiognomy" of the landscape. Church retraced Humboldt's travels in South America. Description and influences The Heart of the Andes is a composite of the South American topography observed during his travels. At the center right of the landscape is a shimmering pool served by a waterfall. The snow-capped Mount Chimborazo of Ecuador appears in the distance; the viewer's eye is led to it by the darker, closer slopes that decline from right to left. The evidence of human presence is shown by the lightly worn path, a hamlet and church lying in the central plain, and closer to the foreground, two locals are seen before a cross. The church, a trademark detail in Church's paintings, is Catholic and Spanish-colonial, and seemingly inaccessible from the viewer's location. Church's signature appears cut into the bark of the highlighted foreground tree at left. The play of light on his signature has been interpreted as the artist's statement of man's ability to tame nature—yet the tree appears in poor health compared to the vivid jungle surrounding it. Church's