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Frederic Edwin Church,
Cotopaxi , 1862, oil on
canvas.
Image not available - no digital rights
from a camp at 4,000 metres (13,000 feet), he described an inter-
mittent sequence of eruptions:
At intervals of nearly four or five minutes an explosion
took place; the first intimation was a fresh mass of smoke
with sharply defined outlines rolling above the dark rocks
followed by a heavy rumbling sound which reverberated
among the mountains.³5
From the foundation of these studies Church painted a series
of monumental canvases including Cotopaxi (1862), The Heart
of the Andes (1859), Chimborazo (1864) and Rainy Season in the
Tropics (1866). All celebrated the sublime wildernesses of South
America, a terra nova for American artists and collectors, who
still looked east to Europe for the sources and wellsprings of
their art, even as hundreds of thousands trekked west across the
plains towards California.
Cotopaxi was commissioned by the collector James Lenox,
the owner of the first two paintings by Turner to cross the
Atlantic, Fort Vimieux (1831) and Staffa, Fingal 's Cave (1832).
While the lurid reds and oranges of Cotopaxi 's sunset are patently
'Turnerian' colours, and the composition and tenor of the work
has been likened to Turner's Fighting Temeraire (1839), Church
was making the painting during the first year of the American
Civil War, and perhaps for this reason alone it can be read as
 
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