In Pichincha, American artist Frederic Edwin Church reflects visually on the rich and diverse interconnected web of creation. Church’s beliefs and art were influenced by the writings of the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), who believed in a divine teleological imperative embodied in the natural physical world. Humboldt understood nature to be unity in diversity, ‘one great whole animated by the breath of life’ (Gould 1989: 97).

Church sketched Pichincha in Ecuador in 1857 but the painting was completed in his studio in 1867. In 1859, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published. Darwin’s interpretation of the natural world, in which species existed in a random competition for survival and development, challenged Church’s worldview. Nevertheless, he remained entranced by the awesome beauty, diversity, and complexity of nature.

Echoing Humboldt, Church believed a landscape painting did not need to be a literal rendition of a scene in every detail. Rather, it could be an intriguing capriccio in which disparate elements existed in apparent harmony. Pichincha is a composite of different Ecuadorian landscapes, in which palm trees that cannot grow on the Andean high plains nevertheless do so. Church’s displaced trees even bear fruit, evocative of nature’s creativity and abundance despite their unnatural location.

The foreground of Pichincha depicts a deep, dark valley. Transcending the darkness and encompassing the whole composition is a dispersed light which emanates from the central sun. There is a divine protective and life-giving presence over the mountains. The constancy of the rising and setting of the sun is a powerful symbol in a location so close to the equator. 

Church’s volcano is dormant, but that same volcanic mountain can be an active fearsome force of nature. Tiny people and a donkey cross the chasm on a flimsy-looking bridge suspended between two ridges. This act of faith evokes the traveller’s situation in Psalm 121. Danger is all around but there is also the protective presence of the Creator, manifested in light and in the richness of creation.  

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. (v.3 NRSV)

References

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1989. ‘Church, Humboldt, and Darwin: The tension and harmony of art and science’, in Frederic Edwin Church, ed. by Franklin Kelly (National Gallery of Art: Washington DC), pp.94–107

Huntington, David. 1963–64. ‘Landscape and Diaries: The South American Trips of F.E. Church’, The Brooklyn Museum Annual, 5:65–98

Miller, Angela and Chris McAuliffe. 2013. America: Painting a Nation (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales)