South American Scene, probably "Vespers, Guayaquil River",

1862

In a brief career, Mignot painted subjects in Europe and North and South America—particularly Ecuador, where he traveled in 1857 with Frederic Edwin Church (one of whose South American landscapes is hanging nearby). Mignot differed from his Hudson River School peers in being both Southern and French Catholic, circumstances perhaps reflected in the frequent incorporation of religious subject matter in his South American scenes, which he continued producing until his untimely death at thirty-nine. Depicting the overgrown bell tower of a riverside church beneath Andean peaks, Vespers, Guayaquil River is the likely title of this work dated 1862, the same year a closely related canvas bearing that name, probably a study, was auctioned by Mignot in New York. The artist’s increasing discomfort in the North following the outbreak of the Civil War prompted his decision to move to Europe, leading to the sale of this and other works from his studio.