Iztaccihuatl, Mexico

Frederic Edwin Church's sketch of Iztaccihuatl, Mexico's third-highest peak, documents the artist's ongoing engagement with landscape study. The drawing captures the mountain's distinctive silhouette with economical linework, while handwritten annotations identify geological and atmospheric features—yellow foliage, purple shadows, snow-covered summit. Church's practice of sketching from nature informed his monumental studio paintings. His volcanic Mexican subjects, explored across decades, reflected nineteenth-century American fascination with tropical and mountainous terrain as subjects of scientific observation and aesthetic grandeur.