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Nov 12, 2010

The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows)

1879

Frederic Edwin Church

(American, 1826–1900)

America, 19th century

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 118.8 x 183.2 cm (46 3/4 x 72 1/8 in.)

Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection 1915.684

Location

not on view

Description

Although the location that inspired the painting has been subject to scholarly debate, many believe it derives from Church’s travels through the Ecuadorean Andes nearly a quarter century earlier. The composition reads as an allegory of spiritual salvation: perched atop a dramatic cliff, a brilliantly backlit monastery overlooks a shadowed foreground where a solitary figure navigates a rugged path.

Inscriptions

Inscription

signed lower left: F. E. Church / 79

Provenance

H. B. Hurlbut, Cleveland (1880, as "Monastery Our Lady of the Snows").

Citations

"Report of the Museum's Second Year." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 5, no. 6/7 (1918): 69-79. Mentioned: p. 71 www.jstor.org

Strahan, Edward, ed. The Art Treasures of America: Being the Choicest Works of Art in the Public and Private Collections of North America. vol. 8. Philadelphia: Gebbie & Barrie, 1879. Mentioned: p. 74

Huntington, David Carewh. "Frederic Edwin Church, 1826-1900: Painter of the Adamic New World Myth." Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1960. Mentioned: p. 211-213

Huntington, David Carew. The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church: Vision of an American Era. New York: G. Braziller, 1966. Mentioned: p. 96, 129

Cleveland Museum of Art. "A Check List: American Paintings and Water Colors of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Early Twentieth Centuries in The Cleveland Museum of Art." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 60:1 (January, 1973). pp. 1-36. Reproduced: p. 24, cat. 36

Kelly, Franklin. Frederic Edwin Church. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1989. Reproduced: pp. 170-171

Turner, Evan H., ed. Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991. Reproduced: p. 15

Chong, Alan. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993. Reproduced: p. 39

Carr, Gerald L. Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonné of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site, 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Mentioned: pp. 367, 368, 405, 411, 414, 415, 443; Reproduced: p. 415, fig. 136

Howat, John K. Frederic Church. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Reproduced: p. 174, fig. 185

Carr, Gerald L. "Church's Olana: A New Eden." In Frederic Edwin Church: Romantic Landscapes and Seascapes. New York, NY: Adelson Galleries, 2007. Mentioned: pp.122-23; Reproduced: p. 123

Exhibition history

New York, Century Association (June 7, 1879) (as The Monastery of San Pedro). (Review in Boston Evening Transcript titles the painting "Our Lady of the Snows.")

Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution, Frederic Edwin Church (February 2-March 13, 1966); traveled to Albany, NY, Institute of History and Art (March 30-April 30, 1966); traveled to New York, Knoedler Galleries (June 1-June 30, 1966), cat. No. 140 and p. 80.

Coshocton, OH, Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, American Paintings 1825-1915 (July 7-November 1, 1979), cat. fig. 7.

Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Inaugural Exhibition (June 6-September 20, 1916), cat. p. 125, illus. p. 292.

Lakewood, OH, The Kenneth C. Beck Center, American Paintings 1825-1915, from the Cleveland Museum of Art (September 17-October 13, 1980), same as Coshocton, OH exhibition.

Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum (June 6-September 8, 1991), illus. in cat. p.15.

Inaugural Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (June 6-September 20, 1916).

Frederic Edwin Church. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (organizer) (co-organizer) (February 2-March 13, 1966); Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY (March 30-April 30, 1966); M. Knoedler & Co., Inc. (June 1-30, 1966).

American Paintings 1825 - 1915 from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, Coshocton, OH (organizer) (July 7-November 1, 1979).

American Paintings 1825-1915. Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum, Coshocton, OH (organizer) (co-organizer) (July 7-November 1, 1979); Beck Center for the Arts, Lakewood, OH (September 17-October 13, 1980).

Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 8, 1991).

Cite this page

{{cite web|title=The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows)|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1915.684|author=Frederic Edwin Church|year=1879|access-date=25 September 2023|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows)

The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows)

Frederic Edwin Church

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