Imagined Landscape with Ruined Temple

Download3000 × 1978 px View on a wall Edit

Artist: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900)
Medium: Brush and oil on thin, tan paperboard
Size: 33 × 51 cm (13 × 20 1/16 in.)
Museum: Smithsonian Institution
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Landscape sketch showing an imagined view of an ancient, ruined temple on a plateau in an extremely rugged, mountainous landscape that is likely a composite view of scenery from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Greece, and the European Alps. In the foreground at right, a tall, dark, rough, and rocky outcropping frames the scene. Interestingly, the darker hue of brown pigment here was used by the artist to paint over an ancient temple facade with two-and-a-half columns. Its entablature (above) and stylobate (or base, below) are visible, having not been fully covered.

The linear elements of the columns are still discernable beneath the paint. In the middle distance at left, a ruined temple with a four-column facade is situated upon a flat prominence or plateau. Its cliffside at center left is colored red and orange by the light of the setting sun. A lush, green, and narrow valley is visible at center that extends into the background, where a range of immense and towering mountains forms a high, undulating horizon. The tallest peak, at upper left, is snow-capped while its abrupt mountainsides also catch the sunset light. Above, rosy clouds hang in an otherwise blue-green sky.