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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Frederic Edwin Church

Abandoned Skiff

1850
Oil on Cardboard.
28 x 43.2 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
509
(
1982.40
)
ROOM 31
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Temporary exhibition rooms 54 Temporary exhibition rooms 55 Temporary exhibition rooms 56 Temporary exhibition rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Frederic Church, one of the leading landscape artists of the Hudson River School, produced an outstanding gallery of pictures both of his own country and of the different exotic lands to which he travelled during his lifetime. In summer 1850, Church paid his first visit to Mount Desert Island, a spot frequented by artists before the boom in mass tourism. After a long journey, travelling overland through Vermont and New Hampshire by train and then on board a steamer and schooner, the artist arrived at this small island off the Atlantic coast of Maine. During his stay he made numerous drawings and oil sketches, including this poetic Abandoned Skiff, as a result of direct observation of the coast. In his chronicle of this journey, which describes his impressions of the island and its Irish inhabitants, Church mentions that he painted “the hull of a boat and some rocks” on a foggy morning.

The small boat rendered in minute detail in the foreground takes on huge proportions, occupying much of the composition. In the background, in a sea with a misty horizon, two couples enjoy a ride in a small boat. The artist most likely based the work on the sketches made by his master Thomas Cole during his stays on the coast of Maine during the previous decades. Church also shares Fitz Henry Lane’s admiration of the light-diffused atmosphere and frequent mists of the island to convey the romantic associations of the place. Picturesque America, a publication edited by the writer William Cullen Bryant to disseminate the wonders of the American landscape, mentions in connection with Mount Desert Island the unique pleasure of sitting on a rocky promontory on a day when the mist and the sun vie for supremacy and of observing the images that emerge and vanish in the mist.

Furthermore, as John Wilmerding points out, there is an “implied narrative content in the abandoned skiff, ” which can be interpreted as a metaphor of the human condition according to the custom of depicting empty vessels as symbols of the journey of life. For her part, Katherine E.Manthorne relates the work to the publication of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in 1851, a novel about the whalers of New England, which shows how the artist was in tune with the interests of the public.

On returning to New York, Church exhibited his works at the National Academy of Design, the American Art-Union and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The New York Daily Tribune stressed the particular success of “a very small picture, representing an old boat high upon the shore, and the fog stealing in over the sea.”

Paloma Alarcó
19th Century19th Century. North American Painting. Hudson River SchoolPaintingOilCardboard
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"Church". Curso "Autores de la Colección"
American Art from the Thyssen Collection
Publication
American Art from the Thyssen Collection
This publication aims to re-examine the museum’s collection of American art from multiple angles, spanning categories such as history, politics, science, the environment, material culture and city life.

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American Art from the Thyssen Collection
From 14 December 2021 to 16 October 2022
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Temporary Exhibition
Exploring Eden. 19th century american landscape painting
From 29 September 2000 to 14 January 2001

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Research project American Art from the Thyssen Collection. 2021-2022

With the support of Terra Foundation for American Art

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Abandoned Skiff. Bote abandonado, 1850
Abandoned Skiff
Frederic Edwin Church

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Abandoned Skiff. Bote abandonado, 1850
Abandoned Skiff
Frederic Edwin Church

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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