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Take a Moonlit Stroll

Mark tonight's full moon with Frederick Stuart Church's lunar maiden!

After serving in the Union Army during the Civil War, Church left his financial career and took up art professionally. Church began as an illustrator for Harper's Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, and various children's books.

His early drawings and etchings featured cartoonish animals. They were, in the words of one critic, "mostly humorous or fanciful sketches of some curious phase of animal or bird life, or poetic phantasy in which dainty maidens and saucy cupids play a leading part." Church did not start making more "serious" allegorical paintings until he was in his thirties. The figures in these works, including today's watercolor The Witch's Daughter, were praised as "marvels of womanly loveliness."

Source: "Frederick S. Church," American Art Chapter 43. De Forest Art Library, New York.

Pictured: Frederick Stuart Church, 1842–1924, The Witch's Daughter, 1881, watercolor, 20 1/2 x 12 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly.