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Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World
From the author of American Eden—finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and more—comes a sweeping, richly researched biography of Frederic Church, the great 19th-century American artist whose stunning paintings of remote lands and seas thrilled American audiences and put the young republic on the map of world culture—published on Church’s bicentennial.
“They came to see the world.”
New York, spring 1859. Outside Frederic Church’s Tenth Street studio, men and women amassed by the thousands hoping for a glimpse of his magnificent Heart of the Andes: a painting whose sublime, ‘near supernatural’ rendering of the vast Andean landscape encountered on the artist’s recent travels introduced thousands of Americans to the fierce, majestic beauty of the far-flung wildernesses of the globe.
Frederic Church brought the world to America, and America into the world. Cementing the United States as a cultural and artistic force a full century before America’s Abstract Impressionists rose to prominence, Church’s bold paintings composed odes in color, shadow, and light to natural places near and the lush jungles of South America and immense icebergs of Newfoundland where he journeyed as a young man; the Syrian deserts and ancient, ruined cities where he and his wife traveled following the devastating loss of their two young children; the verdant, luminous valley around the Hudson where Church first studied painting and where he returned and established his estate, Olana, whose landscape itself became a work of art. Deeply influenced by the work of Alexander von Humboldt, Church conjured a vision of the natural world as a place of communion with creation.
Church charted, across the latter half of the 19th century, a career that both inhabited and gave shape to the artistic, cultural, and political crosscurrents of his day. Through a close examination of Church's letters, sketches, paintings, and diaries, and traveling in Church's footsteps to Egypt, the Andes, Petra, Jamaica, and Jerusalem, Johnson traces the path not only of one man’s life, but of a country swept up in an era of vast and vertiginous change. Church worked and lived in New York in the city’s formative years. He was a founder of its first great museum, the Met, and in paintings, not in words, he conveyed his passion for the exquisite natural beauty of the United States, but also for a Union free of slavery. He gave Americans visions of the majesty of their own new country and of the wonders of worlds only to be seen in paintings by this astonishing adventurer and artist. Church was a master artist and innovator, turning landscape painting into a portrait of a nation, and in the process, putting American art on the map of the world. Glorious Country is a book, Johnson writes, “about how we see and what we save.”
“They came to see the world.”
New York, spring 1859. Outside Frederic Church’s Tenth Street studio, men and women amassed by the thousands hoping for a glimpse of his magnificent Heart of the Andes: a painting whose sublime, ‘near supernatural’ rendering of the vast Andean landscape encountered on the artist’s recent travels introduced thousands of Americans to the fierce, majestic beauty of the far-flung wildernesses of the globe.
Frederic Church brought the world to America, and America into the world. Cementing the United States as a cultural and artistic force a full century before America’s Abstract Impressionists rose to prominence, Church’s bold paintings composed odes in color, shadow, and light to natural places near and the lush jungles of South America and immense icebergs of Newfoundland where he journeyed as a young man; the Syrian deserts and ancient, ruined cities where he and his wife traveled following the devastating loss of their two young children; the verdant, luminous valley around the Hudson where Church first studied painting and where he returned and established his estate, Olana, whose landscape itself became a work of art. Deeply influenced by the work of Alexander von Humboldt, Church conjured a vision of the natural world as a place of communion with creation.
Church charted, across the latter half of the 19th century, a career that both inhabited and gave shape to the artistic, cultural, and political crosscurrents of his day. Through a close examination of Church's letters, sketches, paintings, and diaries, and traveling in Church's footsteps to Egypt, the Andes, Petra, Jamaica, and Jerusalem, Johnson traces the path not only of one man’s life, but of a country swept up in an era of vast and vertiginous change. Church worked and lived in New York in the city’s formative years. He was a founder of its first great museum, the Met, and in paintings, not in words, he conveyed his passion for the exquisite natural beauty of the United States, but also for a Union free of slavery. He gave Americans visions of the majesty of their own new country and of the wonders of worlds only to be seen in paintings by this astonishing adventurer and artist. Church was a master artist and innovator, turning landscape painting into a portrait of a nation, and in the process, putting American art on the map of the world. Glorious Country is a book, Johnson writes, “about how we see and what we save.”
- GenresNonfiction
448 pages, Hardcover
Published May 5, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Church matured, his symbolic language became more abstract, and he developed an original visual style that injected political symbolism and not merely into oaks and elms but into all manner of events and processes unfolding in the natural world.
from Glorious Country by Victorial Johnson
Frederic Church is one of my favorite artists and his Cotopaxi at the Detroit Institute of Art is a painting I must see again every visit to the museum. I have seen his paintings in several exhibits, including the 2017 exhibit at the DIA, Church: A Painter’s Pilgrimage and in the 1980 exhibit American Light: the Luminist Movement at the National Gallery of Art.
Cotopaxi by Frederic Church, Detroit Institute of Art
Church emerges on these pages as a vital man of great energy and great faith, a genius artist and loving family man, a risk taker who climbed icebergs and volcanos, a man who literally built his dream castle in the sky.
His talent brought him early under preeminent landscape artist Thomas Cole’s tutelage. Cole’s series of paintings, The Course of Empire, showed nature’s perfection, the rise, and fall, of human civilization temporary while nature was eternal. “We are still in Eden,” Cole said, “The wall that shuts us out of the garden in our own ignorance and folly.” His words should be broadcast still today.
Church was fascinated by emerging technology and scientific and natural history discoveries, the ideas resting comfortable with his Christian faith.
He traveled across America, to Niagara Falls, Maine’s Mt Desert Island and Mount Katahdin, and into thin air in the remote Andes, across deserts to remote Middle Eastern sites, He chased icebergs, and visited to Europe’s wilderness and Greece and Rome’s ruins of past civilizations. He sketched and took notes then returned to the studio to recreate what he had seen in stunning paintings.
Church saw firsthand how powerfully a great painter could shape the way people viewed the world. from Glorious Country
Church lived in tumultuous times. America splitting over slavery, the Civil War, the death of Lincoln. His dramatic skies and violent volcanos reflected the strife in his beloved country. Small human figures are dwarfed in his gigantic landscapes.
I didn’t know that in his later years Church helped establish the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He and his wife suffered from debilitating illness, forcing Church to winter in Mexico. His art fell out of favor with the rise of the Impressionists.
He built his dream castle Olana above the Hudson River, inspired by architecture he had seen in his trip across the Middle East. After his last Church child’s death, Olana and the estate was to go to auction. A man who had wrote his dissertation on the then ‘forgotten artist’ Church worked to save the estate as a state historic sight. What a thrilling save that was!
It was wonderful meeting the man behind these paintings and learning more about the meaning behind the art.
Thanks to Scribner for a free book through NetGalley.
from Glorious Country by Victorial Johnson
Frederic Church is one of my favorite artists and his Cotopaxi at the Detroit Institute of Art is a painting I must see again every visit to the museum. I have seen his paintings in several exhibits, including the 2017 exhibit at the DIA, Church: A Painter’s Pilgrimage and in the 1980 exhibit American Light: the Luminist Movement at the National Gallery of Art.
Cotopaxi by Frederic Church, Detroit Institute of Art
Church emerges on these pages as a vital man of great energy and great faith, a genius artist and loving family man, a risk taker who climbed icebergs and volcanos, a man who literally built his dream castle in the sky.
His talent brought him early under preeminent landscape artist Thomas Cole’s tutelage. Cole’s series of paintings, The Course of Empire, showed nature’s perfection, the rise, and fall, of human civilization temporary while nature was eternal. “We are still in Eden,” Cole said, “The wall that shuts us out of the garden in our own ignorance and folly.” His words should be broadcast still today.
Church was fascinated by emerging technology and scientific and natural history discoveries, the ideas resting comfortable with his Christian faith.
He traveled across America, to Niagara Falls, Maine’s Mt Desert Island and Mount Katahdin, and into thin air in the remote Andes, across deserts to remote Middle Eastern sites, He chased icebergs, and visited to Europe’s wilderness and Greece and Rome’s ruins of past civilizations. He sketched and took notes then returned to the studio to recreate what he had seen in stunning paintings.
Church saw firsthand how powerfully a great painter could shape the way people viewed the world. from Glorious Country
Church lived in tumultuous times. America splitting over slavery, the Civil War, the death of Lincoln. His dramatic skies and violent volcanos reflected the strife in his beloved country. Small human figures are dwarfed in his gigantic landscapes.
I didn’t know that in his later years Church helped establish the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He and his wife suffered from debilitating illness, forcing Church to winter in Mexico. His art fell out of favor with the rise of the Impressionists.
He built his dream castle Olana above the Hudson River, inspired by architecture he had seen in his trip across the Middle East. After his last Church child’s death, Olana and the estate was to go to auction. A man who had wrote his dissertation on the then ‘forgotten artist’ Church worked to save the estate as a state historic sight. What a thrilling save that was!
It was wonderful meeting the man behind these paintings and learning more about the meaning behind the art.
Thanks to Scribner for a free book through NetGalley.
May 14, 2026
I’m less than 100 pages into this book, but I can’t say enough good things about it. If you’re interested in reading about art and artists at all, I highly recommend it. It’s fantastic. The author points out Church’s art relative to the history of his country and the symbolism within his paintings.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This is an extraordinary book - as rich and complete as Church himself. A delight to read and a deep dive into the life of one of America’s finest painters.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews