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

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Location

206 American Landscape

Did You Know?

Church's spectacular home and studio 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.

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