The Royal Tombs at Petra, Jordan

Frederic Edwin Church's sketch captures the monumental facade of Petra's carved tombs set against the dramatic geology of Jordan's desert landscape. Church, a leading Hudson River School painter, traveled extensively to sketch exotic sites that would inform his large-scale studio compositions. This rapid pen study demonstrates the artist's method: recording architectural detail, atmospheric effects, and topographical features with economical line work. The notation and annotations visible here reveal Church's practice of annotating colors and spatial relationships for later reference, transforming field sketches into source material for finished paintings that would bring distant lands to audiences in nineteenth-century America.