科托帕希

Church painted this erupting Andean volcano in 1862, the second full year of the American Civil War, and viewers at its New York showing the next year read the smoke exactly that way. Ash blots out most of the sky while the sun burns low through it and lays a hard streak of light across the lake below. Church had travelled twice to Ecuador, following the routes of the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, so Cotopaxi was a peak he already knew well. Whether he meant the picture as a comment on the war is still argued over. It was one of several versions he made of the mountain, and this large canvas was painted for the New York collector James Lenox.