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Frederick Stuart Church | |
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| Born | 1842 |
| Died | 1924 |
Frederick Stuart Church (December 1, 1842–February 18, 1923)[1] was an American artist, working mainly as an illustrator and especially known for his (often allegorical) depiction of animals.
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He was born inGrand Rapids,Michigan. His father was an important figure in politics as well as a well-known lawyer. At the age of 13 he left school and took a job at the then newly establishedAmerican Express Company in Chicago, with his parents intending him to have a business career. Being nineteen at the outbreak of theCivil War he served in the Union Army. After his discharge he returned to Chicago, having decided to devote his life to art, and started studyingdrawing underWalter Shirlaw at the city'sAcademy of Design.[2]
In 1870 he took the decision to continue his studies inNew York City, which became his home for the rest of his life. He enrolled at theNational Academy of Design, where he was taught byLemuel Wilmarth. He joined theArt Students League, headed by his old teacherWalter Shirlaw, in which he remained involved for the rest of his life.
Unlike many other Americans of his time who felt themselves to be living in a cultural backwater, Church - while he did think that an artist needed to be formally taught - saw no need to study art in Europe and in fact only crossed the Atlantic late in his life. He often expressed outspoken pride in original American art and declaring that "foreign art" had "little to teach Americans". This might be a reflection of the attitudes taken by the strongnativist movements active during his young age, among other places in Chicago when he lived there.
By the middle of the 1870s he was already gaining a name as a gifted illustrator. Among the many magazines and periodicals which eventually took up his works were the various Harper's publications (Harper's Bazaar,Harper's Weekly, andHarper's Young People), as well asFrank Leslie's Weekly,Century Magazine and theLadies' Home Journal. In 1883, Church was elected into theNational Academy of Design as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1885.
He also worked for various commercial companies, for example illustrating thealmanac of theElgin Watch Company and producing an 1881Christmas Card forLouis Prang & Company.
His career was helped along by several devoted patrons, among themWilliam T. Evans,John Gellatly, the bankerGrant B. Schley, and the railroad-car manufacturerCharles Lang Freer, the founder ofWashington, D.C.'sFreer Gallery.
Church became especially known for his fondness of depicting animals, both in their natural state and in anthropomorphic "allegorical compositions" - having both the patience and empathy needed to gain the confidence of his animal "models" and a through understanding of animal anatomy, as well as of animal facial expressions and the moods and feelings they conveyed.
His work onAesop's Fables, including an illustration of the human and animal protagonists of each fable plus an elaborate cover for the whole, is considered among the best of his works.
Though living in the big city, he liked to make painting expeditions to the countryside. In one period, when living on a farm and teaching the owner's two young daughters to draw, he "could often be found handling and posing the tame frogs from the spring house, carrying turtles up from the pond and arranging chickens and other farmyard poultry for Thanksgiving sketches". The aforementioned banker Grant B. Schley eventually provided Church with a specially-built studio at Schley's estate "Froh Helm", located atFar Hills,New Jersey.
While in the city, Church often visitedBarnum and Bailey's premises as well as theCentral Park Zoo, to study and make endless sketches of the animals held there. On such occasions he was described as "playing catch with an elephant, watching the dance of a distressed ostrich and spending hours observing seahorses in an aquarium", so as "to effectively capture the character of each creature".
Aside from his numerous animal drawings, Church dealt with many other themes, usually in a "cheerful and fanciful" mood, such as a "Holiday Series" including "AHalloween illustration of daintywitches crouched by a cauldron under a smoke-filled sky, aThanksgiving image of a young girl drivingturkeys, and a depiction ofChristmas morning on the bottom of the sea as littlemermaids open their gifts andpolar bears dance arm-in-arm with a lovely young woman".
Some of Church's works are kept in the Permanent Collection of theFulton Decorative Arts Gallery at theWashington County Museum of Fine Arts inHagerstown, Maryland. Others are at the collection ofDale and Rosie Horst ofNewton, Kansas, which lent them to the Fulton Gallery in 2003, for an extensive exhibition including both Church's original drawings and the magazines and periodicals in which they appeared.
TheResource Library Magazine, describing the exhibition,[3] noted the following items:
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