Glorious Country - by Victoria Johnson (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From the author of American Eden--finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and more--comes a sweeping, richly researched biography of Frederic Church, the great 19th-century American artist whose stunning paintings of remote lands and seas thrilled American audiences and put the young republic on the map of world culture--published on Church's bicentennial.

"They came to see the world."

New York, spring 1859. Outside Frederic Church's Tenth Street studio, men and women amassed by the thousands hoping for a glimpse of his magnificent Heart of the Andes: a painting whose sublime, 'near supernatural' rendering of the vast Andean landscape encountered on the artist's recent travels introduced thousands of Americans to the fierce, majestic beauty of the far-flung wildernesses of the globe.

Frederic Church brought the world to America, and America into the world. Cementing the United States as a cultural and artistic force a full century before America's Abstract Impressionists rose to prominence, Church's bold paintings composed odes in color, shadow, and light to natural places near and far: the lush jungles of South America and immense icebergs of Newfoundland where he journeyed as a young man; the Syrian deserts and ancient, ruined cities where he and his wife traveled following the devastating loss of their two young children; the verdant, luminous valley around the Hudson where Church first studied painting and where he returned and established his estate, Olana, whose landscape itself became a work of art. Deeply influenced by the work of Alexander von Humboldt, Church conjured a vision of the natural world as a place of communion with creation.

Church charted, across the latter half of the 19th century, a career that both inhabited and gave shape to the artistic, cultural, and political crosscurrents of his day. Through a close examination of Church's letters, sketches, paintings, and diaries, and traveling in Church's footsteps to Egypt, the Andes, Petra, Jamaica, and Jerusalem, Johnson traces the path not only of one man's life, but of a country swept up in an era of vast and vertiginous change. Church worked and lived in New York in the city's formative years. He was a founder of its first great museum, the Met, and in paintings, not in words, he conveyed his passion for the exquisite natural beauty of the United States, but also for a Union free of slavery. He gave Americans visions of the majesty of their own new country and of the wonders of worlds only to be seen in paintings by this astonishing adventurer and artist. Church was a master artist and innovator, turning landscape painting into a portrait of a nation, and in the process, putting American art on the map of the world. Glorious Country is a book, Johnson writes, "about how we see and what we save."

Review Quotes

Praise for Glorious Country

"Victoria Johnson is a gifted writer who gives us a fresh and thrilling Frederic Church--a man far removed from the stiff Victorian who has long populated art history books. She paints a portrait of a passionate, adventurous and profoundly talented man whose life is intricately woven together with the story of the American nation. In her deeply researched and vivid telling, we meet the ambitious painter, the loving husband and father, the intrepid traveler --and so many other incarnations of this extraordinary figure. Glorious Country is, well, glorious." --Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

"In her usual hypnotic manner, Victoria Johnson not only reanimates the work and life of Frederic Church, she transports us to the vistas that inspired him--and which, in turn, he evoked so indelibly in his art. I doubt if Church himself could have painted a better portrait of himself. Anyone interested in America's Civil War-era reverence for the landscape must read this book." --Harold Holzer, Winner of the Lincoln Prize

"Glorious Country is an ambitious, indispensable, and exciting biography that offers new vital interpretive analysis of this leading artist's life and career. Johnson's book provides a major contribution to the scholarship on nineteenth-century American art." --Elizabeth Kornhauser, Curator Emerita, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Until now, the lack of a definitive biography has hindered a full appreciation of Frederic Church's singular importance. Drawing on primary sources, including the artist's own writings and that of family members, friends, and acquaintances, Victoria Johnson has vividly chronicled Church's life as a public figure and a private individual. Glorious Country will prove indispensable to any serious consideration of one of this country's greatest and most important artists." --Franklin Kelly, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, National Gallery of Art (retired)

"Frederic Church was an extraordinarily talented landscape painter who often imbued his works with his perceptive observations on America's cultural values. Victoria Johnson has done a masterful job of illuminating those ties in a riveting biography that captures the spirit of the man, his artistic career, and the swirl of personal and political events that shaped his life. Her lively prose and acute observations make this a must-read for anyone interested in American art." --Eleanor Harvey, Senior Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

About the Author

Victoria Johnson is a writer and professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College in New York City, where she teaches on the history of philanthropy, nonprofits, and New York City. She is the author of American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic, which was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for History, and the 2018 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography. The book was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Cundill History Prize. Johnson holds a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University, as well as an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale. Her website is AmericanEden.org.