Natural History Science: Church and the Heart of the Andes | ||
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This painting, "The Heart of the
Andes," is one of Church's most famous paintings from the trip to South
America. Although it is a composed painting, it is intended not as a product
of artiist creativity, but rather as a scientific summary of the landscape.
Church manages to achieve a sense of natural history, of natural process, in the painting. The scene has a past, a present, and a future. It is clear that the bank on the right has been undercut by the river. Eventually the tree on the bank will fall into the water. |
Frederic Edwin Church, The Heart of the Andes, 1859, Metropolitan Museum of Art | ||
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