Frederic Edwin Church, Sketches from Ecuador

These preliminary sketches document Church's 1857 expedition to Ecuador, where the Hudson River School painter traveled to study tropical landscapes firsthand. The quick studies capture vegetation and distant mountain vistas—including views of Chimborazo—that would inform his monumental studio paintings. Church's working method combined on-site observation with annotated drawings, allowing him to record atmospheric effects and geological formations before synthesizing these elements into carefully composed large-scale works. These pages reveal the artist's process of translating documentary observation into the luminous, dramatic landscapes that defined American landscape painting in the mid-nineteenth century.