The Garden of Art: Painter Frederic Church Built His House Above the Scenery That Build His Reputation

The Hudson River School of American painters owed their name, and much of their popularity, to a pioneering artist who moved to Catskill, NY in the 1820s and began sketching the landscape. A figure of the Romantic movement that included the great composers of Beethoven's era and the English poets such as Wordsworth and Shelley, Thomas Cole turned the Catskills into some combination of the unexplored Rockies and the landscape of myth, offering dramatic sweeps of wild scenery in which the works of nature loomed very large and human figures very small. 

             The works of Cole and a few others formed the first American school of painting that owed less to European models than to the New World -- emphasizing the size, the remoteness and wildness of a country still largely unexplored and likely to create a national character different from Europe.

             Following in Cole's footsteps the second generation of the Hudson River School took the romantic landscape approach to paintings executed all over the world. Among these artists was Connecticut-born Frederic Church. His big paintings of big subject proved popular and profitable. Influenced by the great naturalist and explorer Humboldt, along with the old masters of Europe and the new American Hudson River landscape painters, Church traveled to both the Old World and South America to portray subjects such as volcanoes in the Andes and rain forests. He uses rainbows and sunsets to add emotional color to realistic settings.  

           Aware of the public's appetite for views of earthly wonders, he put paintings of subjects such as Niagara and icebergs on tour for the genera public, who (in the pre-film era) paid money to step inside a hall and look at them. 
 
             Though he moved on from New England and the Hudson Valley to painting the Andes, Church built his own home amid the spawning grounds of the Hudson River School, building a highly idiosyncratic mansion, called Olana, in the town of Hudson, NY. As the tour guide explained on our visit last weekend, after traveling widely, Church based most of the house's design on his appreciation for Persian art. The Persian arch features prominently. 
            Equally impressive as the house itself is the place where he put it. As you can see in the photos the structure is sited up on a summit, with an unobstructed view of the long slope down to the Hudson River. The river divides here around a large island. While the lower Hudson was a major transportation route in the early 19th century, today the river is beautiful but largely untrafficked. From the summit you can also see the iron bridge that carries vehicular traffic across the river in two stages; first to the island and then to the other side. People come here just to walk the grounds and take in the view. 
            The mansion, Olana, houses the Churches' art collection, gathered over several continents. He has sculptural pieces from India, likely copies of ancient pieces. He has a room with its walls tightly packed with his "old masters'' collection, including many oils that have gone dark over time. He has table full of tightly woven Mexican hats. 
          Another suite of rooms embraces the Middle-Eastern motifs in design and furnishings that he saw in his travels. 
          Only a few of Church's own paintings are exhibited in the house; and those came back to him after being sold. The painter could afford to travel widely and build a house like this because in the first decades of his career his art was popular, sold well, and his reputation drew commissions. 
           Church worked closely with prominent architect Calvert Vaux on on the house's individualistic design. Here's how the Olana Historic Site website describes the architecture:  
Stylistically, the building is a villa with asymmetrical massing of towers and block masonry punctuated by fanciful windows and porches. The irregular silhouette of the exterior contrasts with the more regular rhythm of rooms arranged around a central hall. On the exterior, Middle Eastern motifs are carried out in colored brick, wood, slate, ceramic tile and especially stenciling. Together, the various motifs and themes create a unique artistic unity, one that is difficult to categorize.[http://www.olana.org/]

          After the family moved into the house (1872), Church continued to work on unfinished rooms and make improvements for the next 20 years.  
           A visiting to Olana is well worth the trouble. Between what's inside the house and what's outside it, there's plenty of beauty to look at.