Gallery displays Frederic Church works

It's not every day that the Greek Parthenon or Newfoundland icebergs can be seen in the Furness Building. Oil sketches of these and other exotic locations by the renowned nineteenth century landscape painter Frederic Church are on display in the latest art exhibition at the Arthur Ross Gallery. Over 50 of Church's sketches and drawings, on loan from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, appear in this inaugural event for the gallery's tenth anniversary. "We've wanted to put on an exhibition with works from the Cooper-Hewitt museum for several years," said Louisa Dorsey, the exhibition coordinator. "And as they have an excellent collection of his works, they suggested a Church exhibition." The exhibition, which has taken three years to organize, concentrates on the small working sketches that Church made during his regular summer trips abroad. In fact, despite the finished look to most of the pieces, the exhibition has only one properly finished canvas, a large oil painting of the Parthenon which is on loan form the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The exhibition's title, "Under Changing Skies," reflects Church's great love of the sky. As Dilys Winegrad, director of the Arthur Ross Gallery, pointed out, "The sky in its many moods is almost always an important element." Church was the preeminent landscape artist at a time when the landscape painting was regarded as an artist's highest achievement. Born in Connecticut in 1826, Church was apprenticed at the age of eighteen to the great landscape painter and founder of the Hudson River School of painting, Thomas Cole. He exhibited his first works at New York's National Academy of Design show a year later. In the 1850s he began to take long field trips abroad, first south to South America, and later north to Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. After the Civil War, he travelled to Jamaica and, as was common for American artists in the nineteenth century, took two trips to Europe and the Near East. Often painting in extreme weather conditions, Church even went as far to collect rocks from his travels to help him complete his paintings on his return to America. Although much neglected this century, he was an immensely popular artist during his lifetime, and was seen as comparable to the great English painters, Turner and Constable. His paintings of Niagra Falls, the Andes and icebergs off the Canadian coast - sketches of which are all on show in the exhibition - were greeted with almost unprecedented public enthusiasm in America and Europe. The exhibition runs until December 13 in the Arthur Ross Gallery, before moving on to the Katonah Musuem of Art in New York. The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday to Friday, and 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. over the weekend. Admission is free.