Geese Sketches with Figures, East Hampton, New York

Frederic Edwin Church's study sheet demonstrates the observational drawing practices of nineteenth-century landscape artists. These rapid pen sketches—waterfowl in various poses, a reclining figure, a standing observer with net—served as visual reference material for larger compositions. Church, a leading Hudson River School painter, populated his grand landscapes with naturalistic detail. Such working sheets reveal the artist's method: capturing live subjects through economical line work that prioritized essential form and movement. The sketches show birds in profile, rear view, and action, studies that would inform the human and animal elements in his ambitious exhibition paintings.