" Northern Lights " by Artist Frederic Edwin Church, 1865 | ArtLiveAndBeauty

 

Northern Lights by Artist Frederic Edwin Church

Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), an American romantic landscape painter, was a notable exponent of the Hudson River School. The artist was not there at the time when his picture "Northern Lights" was created. Church utilized drawings by his friend Isaac Hayes, an Arctic explorer, and his comprehensive description of the spot and the aurora (from another location) that Hayes had observed in January 1861 to paint the landscape.

Church's painting shows a bleak arctic scene of ice and rock, with the aurora borealis casting a ghostly and whimsical light in the sky. The Hayes expedition's schooner United States may be seen in the left foreground. Dark rocky mountains surround it, and in the distance rises the triangular contour of Church Peak, called Hayes after the artist.

Eleanor Blodgett gave the Northern Lights painting to the Smithsonian Museum in 1911.

 Northern Lights by Artist Frederic Edwin Church, 1865 Oil on canvas. Size: 142.3 x 212.2 cm. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington