Cotopaxi_(painting)
Cotopaxi (painting)
1862 painting by Frederic Edwin Church
Cotopaxi is an 1862 oil painting by American artist Frederic Edwin Church, a member of the Hudson River School. The painting depicts Cotopaxi, an active volcano that is also the second highest peak in modern-day Ecuador, spewing smoke and ash across a colorful sunrise.[1] The work was commissioned by well-known philanthropist and collector James Lenox and was first exhibited in New York City in 1863.[2] Cotopaxi was met with great acclaim, seen by some as a "parable" of the Civil War, then raging in the American South, with its casting of light against darkness in a vast tropical landscape.[1] Church first depicted Cotopaxi beginning in 1853 during his first of several travels to South America, forming a series of at least 10 paintings on the subject during his lifetime.[2] Cotopaxi has been called by some art historians the "apex" of the Cotopaxi series[2] or Church's "ultimate interpretation" of the eponymous volcano.[3]
Cotopaxi is currently exhibited by the Detroit Institute of Arts,[1] while other members of the series are housed in various museums and private collections, including the New Britain Museum of American Art,[4] Smithsonian American Art Museum,[5] Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,[6] Art Institute of Chicago,[7] and Yale University Art Gallery.[8]