Artwork Details
- Title
- Cotopaxi
- Artist
- Date
- 1855
- Location
- Dimensions
- 28 x 42 in. (71.1 x 106.8 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mrs. Frank R. McCoy
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on canvas
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Architecture Exterior — domestic — house
- Landscape — Ecuador
- Landscape — mountain — Mount Cotopaxi
- Landscape — tropic
- Landscape — phenomenon — volcano
- Object Number
- 1965.12
Artwork Description
On his first visit to Ecuador, the artist waited an entire day near the hacienda pictured here, hoping that the clouds would part to reveal the peak. American critics complained that Church's paintings of the volcano did not capture the soft atmospheric haze that they were used to seeing in landscapes. Those who had never traveled to the high country of the Andes did not understand that in the thin, clear air, Cotopaxi's icy flanks gleamed just as Church had painted them.
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006