Vision of the Cross
date: label: Date
content: 1860–85
name: label: Artist
content: Frederic Edwin Church, American, 1826–1900
notes: label: Catalogue Status
content: Research in Progress
label: Description
content: Landscape sketch showing an imagined scene of a metaphorical landscape. Divided between a lush and a barren landscape, this work may be a continuation of Thomas Cole's unfinished "The Cross and the World" series, which symbolically represents the spiritual and earthly paths through life. Here, two figures walk beside each other in the foreground at lower center. Beyond them, an immense, craggy, and foreboding mountain range in the middle distance divides the composition between an empty and barren landscape at left, and a lush, bright one at right. A luminous Christian cross hangs over the landscape at left, glowing above rugged mountains as if an apparition. In the foreground at left, at the opening of the barren, "spiritual" landscape, a pack of wolves chase a bounding deer beside a rocky outcropping with a tree. This rolling, foreground landscape appears covered in snow, highlighted, as it is, in white gouache. Dark clouds hang above and drop ribbons of rain on the central mountain range and into the lush, mountainous landscape at right. A waterfall topped with a line of palm trees leads to a reflective pool or lake beyond. Sharp, soaring mountains surround the body of water as a bright source of light illuminates the scene from behind. Meaning of this and similar works largely uncertain.
place: label: made in
content: USA
setName: label: See more items in
content: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Collection
label: See more items in
content: Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design Department
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Louis P. Church
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 1917-4-1306
objectType: label: Type
content: landscapes
label: Object Name
content: Drawing
label: Type
content: Drawing
objectRights: label: Restrictions & Rights
content: CC0
physicalDescription: label: Medium
content: Graphite, brush and white gouache on tan wove paper
label: Dimensions
content: 29.8 × 44.3 cm (11 3/4 × 17 7/16 in.)