Niagara

1857

Oil on canvas, 101.6 × 229.9 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington

Horseshoe Falls stretches across a long, low canvas, seen from the Canadian side. The National Gallery notes that artists had thought the falls almost unpaintable, and that reviewers praised how Church caught their scale and beauty.

First shown at a New York dealer's gallery in May 1857, titled The Great Fall, Niagara.
Look for one faint rainbow in two pieces: a short arc at upper left, picked up again in the spray in front of the falls.
Church sketched the falls from both the American and Canadian banks the year before.
Church left out any ground at the bottom edge, so the viewer seems suspended above the rushing water rather than standing on a bank.
Toured Britain, where John Ruskin saw it, and U.S. cities; the Corcoran bought it in 1876, and it joined the National Gallery in 2014.

Panorama: A very wide view that sweeps across a scene; in the 1800s also a huge painting shown in its own hall.

Image: National Gallery of Art, Washington (open access) · CC0