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Frank Baron
From Alexander von Humboldt to Frederic Edwin Church:
Voyages of Scientific Exploration and Artistic Creativity5. Church, a Scientific Artist?
In what sense did Church become a scientist? To what extent was he putting into practice Humboldt’s science and aesthetics? What was Church’s unique contribution?
The manner in which Church retraced Humboldt’s steps certainly reflects an effort to understand the explorer’s scientific world. Although these travels constantly demanded the ideal locations to set up an easel, Church soon realized that successful work with the tropical scenery required concentrated study. He could not accomplish what he was seeking during his first trip, to Ecuador, the most promising location for his work, in a trip of only four weeks. A second trip was necessary. This stay lasted seven weeks, and it made the ascent on the Sangay possible. Even during his first stay he had undertaken hikes up the sides of the Pichincha and Chimborazo mountains. Although these ascents were not part of a strictly scientific program, they did provide Church with significant artistic impulses.
On the whole, however, the “science” that Church practiced focused on the contrasts of colors and outlines. His narrative style is not unlike the descriptive passages in which Humboldt had expressed his excitement about all volcanoes, but especially those that were erupting. As an artist, Church was not simply reproducing what Humboldt had observed and recorded; he made his own unique contribution. The key to success required the imaginative translation of dramatic encounters with nature into works of art.[1]
Church’s sketches from this period also depict individual flowers, leaves, and trees; these were studies that prepared the artist to render the Andes accurately, if not scientifically. On the other hand, Church certainly recognized the relationship of science to poetic and artistic spheres in Humboldt’s work. Always shifting back and forth between scientific and humanistic discourse, Humboldt’s narrative revealed to Church the ways in which his art might be compatible with the work of the scientist. Humboldt the scientist and Church the artist shared a concern for two elements: diversity of the environment and the interconnectedness of all forms of being. For Humboldt, diversity is a constant theme. Because of the varied plant forms, the Andes, according to Humboldt, surpass by far what Europe has to offer.
Are we not justified in hoping that landscape painting will flourish with a new and hitherto unknown brilliancy, when artists of merit shall more frequently pass the narrow limits of the Mediterranean, and when they shall be enabled far in the interior of continents, in humid mountain valleys of the tropical world, to seize, with the genuine freshness of a pure and youthful spirit, on the true image of the varied forms of nature?[2]
As Humboldt continued, he made clear that art works, which had not been possible up to now, had to embrace individual forms in relationship to totality.
Those noble regions have hitherto been visited mostly by travelers whose want of artistic education, and whose differently directed scientific pursuits afforded few opportunities of their perfecting themselves in landscape painting. Only very few among them have been susceptible of seizing on the total impression of the tropical zone, in addition to the botanical interest excited by the individual forms of flowers and leaves.[3]
Humboldt had been motivated by a realization that Europeans were too insular and limited to gain a profound understanding of nature. It would be a mistake, however, to see the task of the artist as primarily descriptive. Timothy F. Mitchell has shown that Humboldt’s conception of a new science had direct implications for art when ”the study of relationships replaced pure description.”[4] As he embarked for the Americas, Humboldt wrote:
I shall collect plants and fossils and make astronomic observations with excellent instruments. I will conduct chemical analyses of the atmosphere. . . . But all that is not the main purpose of my expedition; above all, I will observe the interaction of forces and the influence of the inanimate environment on plant and animal life. My eyes will constantly focus on this harmony.[5]
[1] “Humboldt’s discussion of the various aspects of light in the tropics stands as a major theme alongside his evocations of exotic tropical vegetation and the cordilleras. In the tropical paintings of Church, the quality of light is startling. Diffused through a palpable atmosphere, light illuminates landscapes that are incredibly rich in detail, yet forma an easily grasped, total prospect. Church transformed Humboldt’s prose evocations to the vivid canvases that Humboldt knew could be painted of the tropics.” Emunds V. Bunkśe, “Humboldt and an Aesthetic Tradition in Geography,” Geographic Review 71 (1981): 145.
[2] Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. 2 (New York: Harper, 1863), p. 93.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Timothy F. Mitchell, Art and Science in German Landscape Painting. 1770–1840 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 134. See also Ottmar Ette, “’Eine Gemütsverfassung moralischer Unruhe.’ Humboldtian Writing: Alexander von Humboldt und das Schreiben in der Moderne.”
In: Alexander von Humboldt—Aufbruch in die Moderne (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001),
pp. 33–55.
[5] Alexander von Humboldt’s letter of June 5, 1799 to Karl Ehrenbert von Moll: “Ich werde Pflanzen und Fossilien sammeln, mit vortrefflichen Instrumenten astronomische Beobachtungen machen können; ich werde die Luft chemisch zerlegen. . . . Das alles ist aber nicht Hauptzweck meiner Reise. Auf das Zusammenwirken der Kräfte, den Einfluss der unbelebten Schöpfung auf die belebte Thier- und Pflanzenwelt, auf diese Harmonie sollen stets meine Augen gerichtet sein!” Quoted from Karl Bruhns, Alexander von Humboldt: Eine wissenschftliche Biographie (Osnabrück: Zeller, 1969, based on the 1872 edition) p. 274.
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