Mountains near Machachi, Ecuador

Frederic Edwin Church sketched this Ecuadorian landscape during his travels in South America, capturing the dramatic terrain near Machachi with rapid, assured pen strokes. The drawing demonstrates Church's facility with topographical rendering—the layered peaks and valleys established through economical linework. Church's South American expeditions (1853 and 1857) furnished material for monumental paintings that made him a dominant figure in American landscape art. These working sketches, executed on-site, reveal the observational precision underlying his studio compositions and his commitment to geological and geographical accuracy in depicting the natural world.