Sketches of Sheep and a Ram

Frederic Edwin Church's field studies of livestock reflect the artist's methodical approach to natural observation during his travels in South America. These sketches—a ram in profile and smaller compositional studies—demonstrate the working practice of nineteenth-century landscape painters who gathered visual research on paper before translating subjects into finished oil paintings. Church's attention to anatomical form and posture established the precise naturalistic detail that characterized his monumental canvases of equatorial landscapes and geological formations.