Superb ... Frederic Church is today half-forgotten. Has Ms. Johnson retrieved him for us as a man worthy of interest? It can surely be argued that she has. A lively, fluent writer, she has given us not a piece of art history or criticism but rather the biography of an enormously gifted man, whose enthusiasms and acquaintances intersected with those of many other fascinating people in New York City and beyond. More than anything, Glorious Country is an absorbing contribution to the life story of a metropolis.
A fresh look ... Just in time for Church’s centennial (he was born into a prosperous Connecticut family in 1826), this biography is also perfectly timed with the nation’s semiquincentennial ... Depicts Church as a sort of Indiana Jones with a painting kit, and she recreates his terrifying treks on high mountain trails in captivating detail.
A superb biography of pioneering 19th-century landscape painter Frederic Church ... A vivid, transformational portrait of an artist who chronicled a nation in flux.
Historian Johnson draws on a trove of archival sources and images to create an engrossing, empathetic, and comprehensive life of painter Frederic Edwin Church ... An impressive, beautifully written work of scholarship.
