The Art and Architectural Trust

Church was the
Paradigm of the artist who becomes the public voice of a culture,
summerising its beliefs, embodying its ideas and confirming its assumptions.
Nature and Culture, Barbara Novak

'Nothing is accidental; he has meditated his thought, breathed his inspiration, lived in the spirit of his subject, so that every stroke of his pencil is guided by the unerring instinct of faith in that which he beholds.' Russell's Magazine 5th August 1859.

There are three representations of The Trinity within Rocky Forest Pool '57. A trilogy or Trinity of Trinities.

To activate the inter-active analysis of the Christian symbolism and find the Trinity of Trinities, please go to: Explore the Painting.

This small oil sketch was originally known and sold as Sunset by Sotheby's Parke Burnet in 1978.
Dr. Gerald Carr was the first to identify it correctly as The Evening Star 1858.

According to The Cosmopolitan Art Journal "this exquisite picture representing the setting of a single star upon a placid lake" was painted as a memorial to a recently deceased child of Erastus Dow Palmer who had been named after Church.
Dr. F. Kelly, p.p. 106. 107: Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape.

'More immediate was the growing threat of civil strife between the North and the South over the question of whether slavery should be extended into the newly acquired western territories.' Tim Barringer, American Sublime Catalogue, p.130. Assistant Professor in the History of Art, Yale University.

Twilight in the Wilderness 1860 is an epic painting which also resonates with Christian meaning and is the technical pinnacle of his American wilderness paintings.

"Solitude reigns over the scene and as the eye ever turns away from the wilderness below to gaze upon the brilliant canopy of the sky, the imagination whispers that He who was once 'led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted' must often at the twilight hour have turned His gaze from the gloom and loneliness of the forest to the brightness and beauty of those heavens to which His vision of faith were ever opened, revealing the 'Father of Lights.' Art Matters in Baltimore, Boston Evening Transcript, 4th March 1861' from Dr. Gerald L.Carr 1980, p.16.

In 1855 when Durand painted In the Woods to widespread acclaim, Church was aware of Durand's reputation as the most influential painter of the day and had previously been inspired to follow his lead in his attempts to challenge him.

Durand's An Old Man's Reminiscences 1845* influenced Mt Ktaadn 1853. His unlocated Shipwreck, Clearing up after a Storm probably inspired Church to the theme of the wreck in his mediocre painting The Wreck 1852*, etc,.

Andreas Achenbach's stormy seascape Clearing up, Coast of Sicily '47* was eclipsed by Church in Coast Scene, Mount Desert 1863.*

Equally, Durand's In the Woods 1855 was quite probably the inspiration for Rocky Forest Pool '57 (in which Church surpasses Durand - technically, imaginatively, spiritually and intellectually).
* To view these, go to: References.

'From this point on, Church and Winthrop became thoroughly immersed in the wilderness experience and began a "new life" sanctified by a "baptism" in the Penobscot River. Theodore Winthrop, p.67: Life in the Open Air and Dr. F. Kelly, p.89: Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape.

'Mr. Church has condensed the condensation of nature' said Theodore Winthrop in A Companion to The Heart of the Andes 1859.

Church had already started condensing nature in 1855 when he painted The Andes of Ecuador.

He continued with Rocky Forest Pool '57 and then with all his major work.

'The concentration of reality and the shorthand of sensation' was the famous 20th Century painter, Francis Bacon's definition of good Art.

Paul Klee's definition was; 'Art is not there just to reproduce the visible, but to render visible what lies hidden behind the visual world.'

Using both criteria,

Church was, is, and will remain, the eternal genius.

Summary

In Rocky Forest Pool 1857, the American Elm 'the noblest arch beneath the sky' with its 'sacred roof of green' (Henry Ward Beecher) is emerging and has now discretely taken over the left foreground of the painting.

The vision of Paradise Regained takes shape for the first time without the presence of Man. The Way ahead is 'a new babtism', a reaffirmation of Faith.

'The Lesson' therefore is to follow the Way of Christ and The Light on the Water. The river leads towards three trees in the luminous evanescent distance representing the Trinity and the very presence of the Omnipresent God of Creation within His perfect and sublime wilderness (which is God's Gift -Theodoros- inscribed in Greek on the stretcher). The Creation and Art of God.

Rocky Forest Pool 1857 predates The Evening Star 1858 and like this small sketch, is important because for the very first time in his paintings of the 50's it portrays a pure untouched wilderness without a trace of Man, his works or his animals. It represents the first step with Niagara 1857 (after Sunset 1856 - with its sheep & Twilight 1856-58 - with its trapper's hut) where all references to man are excluded. The Evening Star 1858 follows a year later with Twilight in the Wilderness in 1860. Twilight in the Wilderness 1860 however, has a different message of foreboding to do with the fears, political uncertainties and turmoil of the impending Civil War.

With Rocky Forest Pool 1857 Church has no need as yet to hint at the struggle ahead and it may thus be seen as an inspired, more lyrical and technically more proficient answer to Durand's much acclaimed In the Woods 1855. He would have been aware also of Durand's 'Letters on Landscape Painting' published in The Crayon that year which invoked 'go not abroad then, in search of the exercise of your pencil, while the virgin charms of our native land have claims upon your deepest affections.' Church certainly endorsed this recommendation when in the summer of 1856 he went on a trip into New England and Maine with Theodore Winthrop who recalled 'we both need to be at the heart of New England's wildest wilderness.' It was 'a new life' - 'there, perhaps up in the strong wilderness, we might be recreated to a more sensitive vitality.' It showed them new ways of seeing and feeling through another 'Baptism.'

For the first time in his Art, Church was confirming his complete Faith in the spiritually regenerative and benevolent influences of pristine nature. Interestingly, a page from Milton's Paradise Regained and a print of Christ's Baptism is glued to the old stretcher with the inscription (meaning God's Gift) or Theodore in English.

Rocky Forest Pool 1857 is part of the creative and spiritual bounty from that trip. Paying particular attention to the luminous evanescent atmosphere and Light on the Water, here is a perfect Humboldtian painting of a sublime North American 'sylvan Scene', painted with Ruskinian precision and with all the technical genius that Church had by then learnt from Turner and through his own diligent enquiry and practice.

Rocky Forest Pool 1857 technically pre-empts and prepares us for his epic paintings.

In Heart of the Andes 1859, Church employs similar techniques to convey his 'grand pictorial poem' through mountains and woodlands, plants and river.

For Icebergs 1861 he conjures the three basic elements of the Arctic - ice, water and sky in order to express a desolate frozen landscape.

In Twilight in the Wilderness 1860 and Rocky Forest Pool 1857 Church uses, water, trees and particularly the setting sky in Twilight and on the luminous evanescent light in Rocky Forest Pool 1857 - to define the elemental character of the North American Landscape and to impart his 'Lessons' through his Art.