Masterpiece Story: Niagara by Frederic Edwin Church

Already well-known for his ambitious landscapes and his depictions of exotic scenes from Latin America (as the one below), Frederic Edwin Church was now tackling a popular domestic tourist destination and the honeymoon capital of the United States.

In the 19th century, Niagara Falls was the hot spot for romance, danger, spectacle, natural wonder, and an overall sense of rugged beauty. In 1827, a hotel owner created a grisly spectacle by sending several zoo animals over the falls in a boat. The first American daredevil, Sam Patch, attracted crowds and newspaper ink with his leaps into the Niagara River in 1829. The Erie Canal and rail lines opened up the falls to an increasing number of tourists including Abraham Lincoln. Maid of the Mist tours started taking sightseers thrillingly close to the splash pool in 1846.

Many artists had painted Niagara Falls before. Church’s mentor, Thomas Cole, completed Distant View of Niagara Falls in 1830. Cole, concerned about the increasing commercialization of the landmark, shows two Native American figures overlooking its natural beauty. Cole is considered the father of what later became known as the Hudson River School, a collection of artists, including Church, celebrated for their grandiose and romantic landscapes.

Frederic Edwin Church’s masterful Niagara, with its low perspective, puts the viewer on the brink of the violent power of the falls. You can almost feel the pull of the current taking you downward, and at 90 inches wide, it mimics the vastness of the falls in person.

Church, in coordination with his gallery, presented Niagara in a single-work exhibition charging 25 cents, which is around 9 dollars today. The exhibition welcomed large crowds. Then, the painting toured several major US cities, attracting over 100,000 visitors in New York before stunning European audiences with its size, power, and majesty.

In 1867, Church completed Niagara Falls, from the American Side, and it certainly showcases the grandiose splendor of the falls in the tradition of the Hudson River School. Niagara, with its unique perspective, survives as the most iconic painting of the falls.

Like his mentor Thomas Cole, Church worried the development of Niagara Falls would strip it of its beauty. He used the fame of his sensational painting to push for the preservation of the natural environment in the area as part of the Free Niagara Movement, a group also supported by Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Charles Darwin.

The tug-of-war between attracting tourists’ dollars while preserving what makes the falls worth traveling to see, continues today. Likewise, Church’s painting, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., still places viewers amid the sublime power of the raging cataract.