I bet you didn’t know this year is the 200th anniversary of Frederic Church’s birth. You probably haven’t even heard of him. Admittedly, I had not either, when I went to visit his home and property at Olana New York State Historic Site in Hudson, New York.
The property, on 250 acres, is open to the public and you can explore the grassy and forested land for free.
While many say Church is one of the best American painters from the 1800s, he’s one that many haven’t heard of. I was not familiar with his work, and I do see myself as decently up on artists and art. Church was a student of Thomas Cole (whose house you can see across the Van Winkle Bridge from the Olana house). He was part of the Hudson River School, a name given to artists (not so kindly) in the New York state area painting landscapes, around 1825-1875. The landscapes were not always of that area, though.
Church designed the house, which has a Persian look to it, though he hadn’t been to Persia. The home is filled with some of the 10,000 objects they purchased during their travels. 95% of what is in the house today is original. It was built from 1870 to 1874.
He bought some of the initial 250 acres after selling his Niagara painting (now in the National Gallery in Washington DC) for $5,000 in 1857, around $125,000-175,000 in today’s dollars.
In addition to his painting skills, Church was an excellent businessman. He charged visitors a quarter to see his Niagara painting in his Manhattan studio, and then took the painting on tour, charging for the viewing. This was the painting that made him famous. The quarter paid was the equivalent of $10 today. He also created and sold prints of his work. Many people bought the Niagara prints as wedding gifts.
His famous iceberg painting was sold for $10,000, more than $300,000 in today’s money. When he displayed this, the proceeds supported the Union war efforts. And his large-scale painting, The Heart of the Andes, was also taken on the road in a special frame, for viewing. It is now in the Met in NYC.
Fun facts: Church was a founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and also the Parks Commissioner of Central Park. Church helped create a campaign to establish parks on both sides of the Niagara Falls.
Another fun fact: Church was friendly with Mark Twain (when he was known as Samuel Clemmons). Twain was a visitor to the home and did poetry readings on the small stage at the base of the stairwell.
As we learned in our house tour, Church’s paintings spanned the globe. He and wife traveled 18 months in Europe and the Middle East after 2 of their children died of illness, without days of each other in 1865. They wanted to retrace Jesus’s steps. One painting from that journey, of Petra, sits above a gorgeous fireplace in the house.
Over 18 years, Church acquired multiple parcels of land that now make up the entire Olana property. He planted trees, cleared out the marshy muck to create a lake (well, paid people to do it), and built 6 miles of carriage roads on the property. He had a farm on property, which one of his sons managed for a time (he actually lived in the basement and was engaged to his fiancé for 7 years. They didn’t want to tell the future in-laws that he was living in his parents’ basement).
Church and his wife lived at Olana with their 4 children (born after the first two died). The house had no electricity at the time.
Another fun fact: When a power plant was proposed by the Hudson River, in view of Olana, he used one of his landscape paintings as a way to advocate to defeat the proposal. It worked.
If you go to Olana with kids
Olana offers numerous tours of the land and the house (there’s a current painting exhibition on the home’s second floor). We opted for the house tour—it was one of those really hot days in the 90s and we wanted to limit our outdoor time.
Tickets to the house and walking tours are free for kids 16 and under.
The gift shop in the home’s carriage building, and also the visitor center have a film (the same one) about Frederic Church. It’s worth watching.
