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Frank Baron

From Alexander von Humboldt to Frederic Edwin Church:
Voyages of Scientific Exploration and Artistic Creativity

6. Conclusion

The tropics offered a wider range of perspectives and the prospect of their integration of all diverse elements. Humboldt believed that the great diversity of insights he gained through his scientific exploration would ultimately contribute to understanding the underlying unity in nature. This strong faith he shared with Goethe. When the thirty-year old Humboldt embarked on his trip to the Americas in 1799, Goethe was enthusiastic and expressed his confidence that the trip would be of incalculable value.[1] Perhaps Goethe’s Faust was in the back of his mind when Humboldt repeatedly stressed interconnectedness and harmony in nature. Faust’s magic was Goethe’s and Humboldt’s science. Just as Faust had given himself to magic, so Humboldt committed himself to scientific exploration. The ultimate aim, however, was the same:

Dass ich erkenne, was die Welt
Im Innersten zusammhält.
(Lines 382–83)

That I might discover, what binds the world
In its innermost being.

Church’s paintings of the Andes reflect the mysterious interconnectedness in the midst of the greatest imaginable diversity. Church accepted the challenge of showing living and inanimate forms between the burning glow in the valleys at the lowest tropical level and the constantly snow-covered summits of the Andes. In The Heart of the Andes he might have come closest to this kind of all-embracing composition with diversity and harmony, Humboldt’s aesthetic ideal.

It would be unfair to emphasize Humboldt’s influence to the exclusion of Church’s own creative work. The Heart of the Andes and Cotopaxi show that Church was able to weave imaginative plots into landscapes. He created dramatic tension. It is also easy to understand why he might have wanted to take The Heart of the Andes to Europe in 1859. He wrote to a friend: “[The] principal motive in taking the picture to Berlin is to have the satisfaction of placing before Humboldt a transcript of the scenery which delighted his eyes sixty years ago—and which he had pronounced to be the finest in the world.”[2] Ironically, Humboldt died on May 9, just three days after Church had written the letter. We can, nevertheless, see the significance of a meeting that might have taken place. Church had invested years of his life in an artistic project for which Humboldt had set the stage. The artist was seeking confirmation of his own unique achievement and yet giving credit, at the same time, to Humboldt’s inspiring legacy.



[1] “Bei seinem Genie, seinem Talent, seiner Tätigkeit, ist der Vorteil seiner Reise für die Wissenschaften ganz inkalkulabel, ja man kann behaupten, dass er über die Schätze, deren Gewinst ihm bevorsteht, künftig dereinst selbst erstaunen wird.” Johann Wolfgang Goethe in a letter of May 26, 1799 to Wilhelm von Humboldt. Karl Robert Mandelkow, ed., 2nd ed., Goethes Briefe (Hamburg: Christian Weyner, 1968), p. 380. Although Schiller’s initial reaction to Humboldt was unfavorable, he soon realized that the young man had much to offer. He invited Humboldt to contribute to the Horen and referred to him as the foremost German expert in the field of natural philosophy. Cf. Norbert Oellers and Fritjof Storck, eds., Schillers Werke. Briefwechsel, vol. 29 (Weimar: Boehlau, 1977), pp. 112–13 and 450, and Bruhns, p. 205.

[2] Kelly et al., p. 94 and Gould, p. 91.

 

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