Last month on a family trip “back east” we visited Olana, the fabulous fantasy mansion built by famous Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826 – 1900). Now a New York State Historic Site, Olana is an elaborate Persian-inspired home perched at the top of its surrounding immaculately planned and landscaped rolling 250 acres. It was on this hilltop that 18-year-old Church came to study and paint the spectacular views across the Hudson west toward the Catskills in the company of his mentor Thomas Cole, generally considered the father of the first uniquely American style of painting, the Hudson River School. In 1867 Church purchased the first of several pieces of Olana’s land and spent until the completion of his large studio in 1890, altering and “perfecting” both the building and its original natural surroundings.
Heart of the Andes
Church’s first successes however did not come from his luminous Hudson River landscapes, but rather from the startlingly giant paintings of the wonders of nature he had viewed in his world travels. They include the famous paintings: Niagara (1857, 3 1/2 by 7 1/2 feet), The Heart of the Andes (1859, 5 by 10 feet), and Aurora Borealis (1865, 4 1/2 x 7 feet).
Niagara Falls
But what we encountered on Olana’s tour was an artist’s home with so little light. The dining room, filled with obvious copies of European paintings, was only missing the heraldic flags to qualify as a version of the Hearst castle.
And yet, Church considered Olana—this ornately painted and corniced building (to me really not a very homey home) with its totally human-manipulated grounds—his greatest artistic achievement. Church, the landscape painter? The painter of nature? This filled me with a vague sense of dis-ease, of cognitive dissonance. That the tour focused on two issues: this house and how much money Church made off his paintings, rather than on the art Church created (and the viewscape he purchased to preserve it undisturbed for himself as the subject for his painting) just added to the sense of puzzlement.
My brief experience at Olana—with its ornate, decidedly inorganic forms, its lordly positioning on the highest hill and its potpourri of old world architecture—raised a lot of questions. Why would an artist considered to be one of our greatest landscape painters, one who helped define the American sensibility of nature, why would he consider Olana (in one sense an egotistical blot on a still inspiring landscape) to be his greatest work? (to be continued…)
AN OLANA SLIDESHOW (All photos © SR Euston)
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“Why would an artist considered to be one of our greatest landscape painters, one who helped define the American sensibility of nature, why would he consider Olana (in one sense an egotistical blot on a still inspiring landscape) to be his greatest work? (to be continued…)”
Why indeed? I look forward to your conclusion. In the meantime, I’ll offer the speculative thought that perhaps it might have something to do with why most churches have ornate exotic landscapes rather than less formal native ones…