Passing Shower in the Tropics,

1872

Church was the primary pupil of Hudson River School founder Thomas Cole (1801–1848), who imparted to his gifted student the notion of land- scape painting as a vehicle for conveying ideas about nature. For Church, the natural world was most truthfully represented as a series of adjacent environments shaped by changes in altitude and characterized by corresponding variations of flora and fauna. His art articulated an early perception of earth’s fundamentally integrated character, anticipating the advent of ecology. These traits were an abiding concern for the artist following his exposure to the influential theories of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Church visited South America twice during the 1850s, producing a series of grand tropical scenes that combine panoramic vistas with minute, accurate detail. This later, modestly scaled painting similarly focuses on precise atmospheric effects and the representation of nature according to discrete climatic zones.