Erechtheum

In April 1869 Frederic Church was in Athens, near the end of a long journey through the Near East, and up on the Acropolis he worked quickly in oil on sheets of paper. This is one of those studies, later mounted on canvas. The museum dates it to 1869 or 1870. The temple here stands just north of the Parthenon. The Erechtheum was built in the late fifth century BC to house several of the city's oldest cults, Athena and Poseidon among them, and at its right end you can make out the porch where carved maidens stand in for columns and carry the roof. Unlike his Parthenon studies, this one never grew into a large finished painting. It stayed with Church and then with his daughter, Isabel Charlotte, and remained with her descendants for well over a century, until a New York dealer sold it in 1997. In 2008 Theodore and Barbara Alfond gave it to the Museum of Fine Arts in honour of Carol Troyen, the museum's curator of American paintings from 1978 to 2007.