Parish Church of Our Lady of Chiquinquira del Cerrito, Chiquinquira, Colombia

Frederic Edwin Church's architectural study documents a Colombian parish church with meticulous attention to structure and landscape. Working in ink and wash on toned paper, Church renders the whitewashed chapel, bell tower, and surrounding buildings against an amber sky with careful cross-hatching for shadow and depth. The inscription names the church and attributes the drawing to Church's hand. This work exemplifies the nineteenth-century artist's practice of gathering architectural and topographical documentation during travels—visual research that would inform Church's larger landscape paintings and his role in establishing American landscape painting as a vehicle for geographic and cultural inquiry.