id: 148774
accession number: 1976.30
share license status: CC0
url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1976.30
updated: 2020-06-01 09:01:44.550000
Niagara Falls by Moonlight, probably 1856. Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826-1900). Graphite and white gouache; sheet: 11.6 x 16.4 cm (4 9/16 x 6 7/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Robert Arthur Mann 1976.30
title: Niagara Falls by Moonlight
title in original language:
series:
series in original language:
creation date: probably 1856
creation date earliest: 1851
creation date latest: 1861
current location:
creditline: Gift of Robert Arthur Mann
copyright:
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culture: America, 19th century
technique: graphite and white gouache
department: Drawings
collection: DR - American 19th Century
type: Drawing
find spot:
catalogue raisonne:
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CREATORS
* Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826-1900) - artist
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measurements: Sheet: 11.6 x 16.4 cm (4 9/16 x 6 7/16 in.)
state of the work:
edition of the work:
support materials:
description: brown wove paper
watermarks:
inscriptions:
inscription: signed?, lower left, in graphite: f. church
translation:
remark:
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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
title: Year in Review, 1976
opening date: 1977-02-01T05:00:00
Year in Review, 1976. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 1-March 6, 1977).
title: America Draws
opening date: 1984-12-28T05:00:00
America Draws. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 28, 1984-March 17, 1985).
title: American Drawings from the Permanent Collection
opening date: 1998-04-19T00:00:00
American Drawings from the Permanent Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (April 19-July 12, 1998).
title: Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art
opening date: 2000-08-27T00:00:00
Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001).
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LEGACY EXHIBITIONS
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PROVENANCE
Robert Arthur Mann [1947-2017], Miami, FL, gift to The Cleveland Museum of Art.
date: ?-1976
footnotes:
citations:
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.
date: 1976 -
footnotes:
citations:
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fun fact:
In this drawing, Church manipulates negative space—the space around and between his drawn subjects—to suggest the forms of water and smoke.
digital description:
By the time Frederic E. Church executed this study of the Canadian side of Horseshoe Falls, Niagara Falls was already an icon of both American art and the American nation. Tourists and artists flocked to the falls in pursuit of a firsthand experience of the sublime, a sensation of elation and terror that portrayals of Niagara Falls had notorious difficulty reproducing. Church’s celebrated oil painting The Great Fall, Niagara (1857) was one of the few depictions believed to capture the fall’s power in pictorial terms. Like many artists of the Hudson River School, Church used drawings made on site to preserve the visual memory of the place he intended to paint in oil. Cleveland’s sheet was possibly executed during one of the four trips he took to the falls in 1856 to prepare for Niagara. As a night scene, this study in light and shadow is unusual among Church’s drawings. The dark brown paper enhances the image’s nocturnal quality and allowed Church to render the atmospheric effects of mist and clouds. He used white gouache not only as a highlight, but also to define the luminous forms of water and vapor, crafting the landscape’s substance out of negative and positive space. On the picture’s left-hand side, Church represented the man-made Terrapin Tower in shadowy miniature, a testament to his interest in site-specific details—and also, perhaps, a reminder of the diminutive status of human creation in the face of awesome natural forces.
wall description:
The son of a Connecticut minister, Church was the only pupil of the founder of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole (1801–1848). Surpassing Cole in technical ability, he was a master at capturing atmospheric effects, as is evident in this remarkable moonlit study of Niagara Falls from the Canadian side, with mist rising from the water. Church probably made this study in preparation for an enormous canvas of Niagara (1857), now in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
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RELATED WORKS
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CITATIONS
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IMAGES
web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1976.30/1976.30_web.jpg
print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1976.30/1976.30_print.jpg
full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1976.30/1976.30_full.tif