Trees and Rocks on the Road to Mocha, Ecuador, near Chimborazo

Frederic Edwin Church's field sketch captures vegetation and geological formations encountered during his South American travels. Executed in ink with quick, observational linework, the drawing documents trees, rocky outcroppings, and landscape features along the route near Chimborazo volcano. Church's notational approach—combining precise botanical detail with gestural landscape notation—served as research for his large-scale paintings. These expedition studies were fundamental to Church's practice, providing visual data he would synthesize into monumental canvases that defined nineteenth-century American landscape painting and shaped public understanding of equatorial geography.