Mountains near Baalbek, Syria

Frederic Edwin Church sketched this Lebanese landscape during his travels through the Middle East, capturing the snow-capped peaks and cultivated valleys near the ancient Roman ruins of Baalbek. Church's oil studies from his 1868 expedition reveal his interest in exotic topography and atmospheric effects—the layered mountains rendered in soft purples and blues, the foreground's russet earth and green vegetation suggesting the region's agricultural fertility. These travel studies fed his monumental studio paintings, which brought distant geographies to American audiences through the dramatic vision of Hudson River School landscape painting.