Mountains near Mocha, Ecuador

Frederic Edwin Church's sketch captures the dramatic landscape of the Ecuadorian Andes, rendered in ink and gouache on brown paper. Church traveled through South America in 1857, seeking the sublime vistas that defined Hudson River School aesthetics. This rapid study—with its gestural mountain forms and luminous cloud mass—demonstrates the artist's field method: quick notation of geological structure and atmospheric effect for later studio composition. Church's South American journeys produced some of the era's most monumental landscape paintings, influencing how American artists approached the depiction of tropical and mountainous terrain.