Storm in the Mountains

1847

Frederic Edwin Church

(American, 1826–1900)

Culture

America

Medium

oil on canvas

Measurements

Framed: 98.7 x 86.4 x 9.2 cm (38 7/8 x 34 x 3 5/8 in.); Unframed: 75.5 x 62.8 cm (29 3/4 x 24 3/4 in.); Former: 94.5 x 81.5 x 9 cm (37 3/16 x 32 1/16 x 3 9/16 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of various donors by exchange and Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1969.52

You can copy, modify, and distribute this work, all without asking permission. Learn more about CMA's Open Access Initiative.

Location

206 American Landscape

Did You Know?

Church's spectacular home and studio, named Olana, is preserved as a New York State Historical Site.

Description

Dominating this composition is a lightning-blasted tree embodying nature's awe-inspiring power and endless cycle of life and death. A popular motif because of these associations, the blasted tree was favored by many landscape painters like Church, who prominently featured it here.

$A vertically oriented oil painting depicts a splintered tree snapped and bent over on itself in an "n" shape in the lower left corner, with misty, white clouds against a dark gray sky nearly covering the dark silhouette of a mountain behind it. A golden light illuminates the fractured tree trunk and the rocky outcropping it grows on, flecked with fine, green leaf detailing highlighted with white as if wet.$