Church's Painting: The Heart of the Andes (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Church's Painting: The Heart of the Andes

The origin of the broken surface of the earth, we learn, is the subterranean power of upheaval. In obe dience to that power, inconceivable to the human mind, the outer crust of the globe is lifted into the irregu larities which we see. Around and upon these are the work and play and battles of the elements. The surf beats at the base, and the storm at the summit of the mountain; along its sides sweep the wind and rain; heat and frost dissolve, explode, and crumble; torrents scour the chasms; rivers wind through the valleys, bearing forward fragments of their own banks and channels; the earthquake detaches; through the omni presence of gravitation, the abyss receives alike the sifted sand and, pebbles, and the avalanche. Thus the elements and forces of the earth are forever busy in the apparently infinite task of reducing to a level the primeval erections of violence.

But how are these opening remarks pertinent to landscape-painting, or to its criticism? Evidently, some apprehension of the process of landscape-making by the instrumentalities of the Creator, is necessary in order successfully to conduct the process of landscape painting by the feeble instrumentalities of man. And what is necessary to the painter, is in some degree to the critic, whose proper task is to reproduce and ex plain, in so far as he is able, the work of the artist, and compare it with the living landscape. A knowledge of the roughening and the smoothing of the earth, by the powers which haunt its sunless caverns, and toil and contend upon its face, is evidently essential in order to an intelligent perception of that face, as we behold it. To the artist who would truthfully picture it, cer tainly, indispensable knowledge. Without that, his work cannot have the expression and significance of the actual - cannot have that organic unity - cannot have that all-pervading life, energy, and beauty which conspire to make it a genuine creation of art, in contra distinction to the work of the mere mechanic.

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