El Partenón

Frederic Church had made his name on wilderness, thundering Andes, Arctic icebergs, Niagara. In 1869 he did something different and sailed to Greece, spending weeks among the ruins on the Acropolis in Athens, sketching and laying in oil studies. Daily I study its stones, he wrote of the Parthenon, certain a great picture could be made of it. Back home a commission from the financier Morris Jesup let him paint it large in 1871. There is no drama of weather here, just an afternoon, broken capitals and column drums scattered across the foreground, the marble warmed by a low reddish light. Church cared enough about the whole object that he designed its heavy frame himself.