The Art and Architectural Trust

Church's study of Turner
was probably of key importance in leading him to his
consummate mastery of light and atmosphere in diffused and vaporous states.
Dr. F. Kelly.

'Church, like Turner, has mastered the secret of painting space.
He leads the eye into the distance less by lineal or aerial perspective than by receding gradations of color.' This was the Ruskinian comment by the New York Times supplement, National Academy of Design of 20th April 1859 about the Heart of the Andes 1859, but it is particularly relevant here.
Note also the similarity in the depiction of flowing water in the center of Rocky Forest Pool '57 and that of Heart of the Andes - to the bottom right.*

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851. The foremost British painter of oils and watercolors of the first half of the 19th century. A hugely influential Genius.

John Ruskin, 1819-1900 was the foremost art critic writing in English in the 19th Century and a talented practicing artist. He first met Turner in 1840 and became his most earnest and articulate admirer.

'Church's study of Turner was probably of key importance in leading him to his consummate mastery of light and atmosphere in diffused and vaporous states.' Dr. F. Kelly. p.112. Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape.

Church's teacher, Thomas Cole, was born in England in 1801 and died in New England, prematurely in 1848. In 1844 when Church arrived in Catskill, Thomas Cole was considered America's foremost landscape painter.

He believed however that Church had, 'the finest eye for drawing in the world' and although Church's work by the late forties and early fifties had surpassed technically the work of his mentor, Cole continued to have an enduring influence through out Church's life.

Alexander Von Humboldt, 1769-1859 the world famous German Naturalist and Geographer who wrote Cosmos: Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. This was translated into English in the 1840's.

'Cosmos was an attempt to synthesize existing scientific knowledge about the world into a grand theoretical system that could explain the underlying principles of the universe.' He 'was particularly interested in landscapes as a means to acquaint people with parts of the world they would never see.'
Dr. F. Kelly. P.47 A Passion for Landscape: The Paintings of Frederic Edwin Church.

Church had sent The Heart of the Andes 1859* to Europe in the hope that his mentor would be able to view it but Humboldt died beforehand.

Humboldt's theories, just as he had predicted, were 'scientifically' obsolete by the time that, Charles Darwin published, The Origin of Species in 1859, the very year that Humboldt died. Church never owned a copy of this seminal work.
* To see the Painting below: Click on the blue.

Inspiration

'It leads the eye into the distance, less by lineal or aerial perspective than by receding gradations of colour.'

In Rocky Forest Pool 1857 Church shows how much he has learnt, Technically and Aesthetically from Turner & Ruskin -
'the law of evanescence or the way gradations of light and atmosphere soften the appearance of distant objects'

Church has learnt Philosophically and Spiritually from his mentors, Thomas Cole and Alexander Von Humboldt whose Cosmos confirmed many of Church's devout Christian beliefs in the existence of 'a divinely ordered structure of the world.'

Footnote Asterisk * The Heart of the Andes 1859