The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-06-17
A New Picture by Church.
The New York World says:-

new and very noble picture by Mr.. Fred
erick E. Church was exhibited last night at
the Century club. 1t is o grand composition,
the theme of which is taken from the higher
temperate region of the Andes in Ecuador. and
the sentiment of which is admirably summed
up in the name which the artist has given it
of "Our Lady of the Shows" Upon a lofty
cliff which rises to the right hand in the pic
ture CLEAN rosy-red against the setting sun the
strong tower and the picturesque walls of a
monastery, set off with wonderful power by the
golden and dazzling masses of vast Nevada
or snow-clad mountain beyond. A mighty An
dean chain lit up here and there in the riffs
of the mountains with lines and patches of
snow stretches away to the left under a sky
indescribably lustrous, soft and pure in color
and slopes to deep valley in the foreground
which is as full of GOODNESS and shade as is the
upper heaven of warmth and light. In this,
his latest work, Mr.. Church has treated an en-
tirely new phase of South American landscape.
1t is no longer the tropical plains and still la
gunes of New Grenada, the picturesque and
verdant mountain lands of Jamaica, the desc
lately cleaning grandeurs of the great sierras
or the Columbian Andes which he brings be-
fore US, but the sub-Alpine solitudes as we may
call them, of Ecuador, amid which the piety
of the Conquistadores bade the enduring mon
uments of their faith arise and confront the
eternal SHOWS of the giant Cordillera. This
lonely monastery perched upon the pinnacled
rocks with the shining SHOWS above and around
it and the mountain roadway winding far be-
low through the green valley which it over
looks and guards, speaks like the Grande Cha
treuse among the pine-clad precipices of the
Spaey, "of God and of the SOUL" 1t brings
before us the South America not of the aborig-
ines alone or of tropical nature in her uncon-
trollable luxuriance, but of civilized and Span
ish history. This eyre of the church planted
thousands of feet above the level of the Carrib-
bean and the Pacific and dedicated to "Orr
Lady of the Shows" speaks to the memory and
imagination of every educated man as we'll as
to the eye of the artist and the worshipper of
nature. Though but a single figure is visible
on the great canvas, that of an italian woman
close wrapped in her dark blue rebozo, and
trudging along the winding roadway in a cool
dusky vale, the whole picture is informed with
subtle human interest and significance which
give it special place of its own among the
great landscapes which have earned for Mr..
Church the name and the authority of master
in the art not of this country alone, but of this
century. From the point of view of its tech
nical qualities, much more is to be said of this
remarkable work than we can now attempt to
say. 1t is the property of Mr.. III. B. Hurlbut,
OF Cleveland, who intends, we believe, to send
it at once to that city, but we hope at some fu-
ture and not distant day better opportunity
may be afforded the artists and the amateurs of
New York of studying in detail and enioying
at their leisure picture which must be ranked
with the very finest of Mr.. Church's works.