Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

expressions. Some of these wildly popular paintings not only expandedthe range of common American taste, but widely exhibited works, suchas Niagara of 1857, and the chromolithograph, Our Banner in the Sky, alsoexpressed a nationalistic connection that seemed to suit a nation rapidlyexpanding under “Manifest Destiny.” In the 1850s Church made two tripsto South America, producing many dramatically panoramic paintings ofthe Andes mountains and the Ecuadorian volcano Cotopaxi that expressedsimultaneously his scientific and spiritual interests in such phenomena (seeFigure 5). Often combining various perspectives in one picture, he visuallydrew the spectators into the foreground of his pictures only to dazzle themwith a grand, frequently elevated (and thus, disembodied) landscape perspective.While Church used a number of luminist elements for his theatricaleffects, they are not always used consistently and are often mixed with otherapproaches. In later years, he traveled worldwide (accompanied by a photographer,who shot the subjects Church also sketched), becoming perhapsmost known for his colorful and imposing paintings of Arctic icebergs.Figure 5. Frederick E. Church, Coto-paxi, 1862, The Detroit Institute of ArtsBefore leaving luminism, I should also briefly mention the remarkablypalpable and intensely observed, non-painterly, trompe l’oeil still lifesof the late nineteenth century by William Michael Harnett (1848–1892), JohnFrederick Peto (1854–1907), and John Haberle (1856–1933). Their composedassemblages of everyday objects seem in luminist fashion to be sealed instillness within the shallow boxes of their frames and presented in an imper-107