Glorious Country

“Astute…bravura…Church once wrote to a fellow artist, ‘See for yourself this glorious country, where we reside. I cannot do it justice either with pen or pencil.’ Victoria Johnson’s sharp-eyed biography proves he was wrong on that score.”—Washington Independent Review of Books


“Astute…bravura…Church once wrote to a fellow artist, ‘See for yourself this glorious country, where we reside. I cannot do it justice either with pen or pencil.’ Victoria Johnson’s sharp-eyed biography proves he was wrong on that score.”—Washington Independent Review of Books


“Victoria Johnson has done full justice to this extraordinarily talented man who was both blessed and cursed by fate…In vivid prose, she draws Church’s character into focus….. The artist, ever reticent about his inner life, would surely have preferred that we keep our attention focused on his paintings. Fortunately for us, Victoria Johnson, in drawing his portrait in such vibrant detail, has given us a biography as richly rewarding and absorbing as his art.”—The American Scholar


Praise for Glorious Country

“In this absorbing biography of Frederic Church, Victoria Johnson exhibits a special intimacy with the creator of some of the most sublime landscape paintings in American history. She shadows him on his intrepid quests to remote and exotic places, then ably shows how those trips yielded imperishable art. Best of all, she dusts off the musty label of Hudson River School artist that has so often stigmatized Church and restores to us the original freshness and wonder of his work.” — Ron Chernow, author of Mark Twain and Alexander Hamilton

“Victoria Johnson is a gifted writer who gives us a fresh and thrilling Frederic Church—a man far removed from the stiff Victorian who has long populated art history books. She paints a portrait of a passionate, adventurous and profoundly talented man whose life is intricately woven together with the story of the American nation. In her deeply researched and vivid telling, we meet the ambitious painter, the loving husband and father, the intrepid traveler—and so many other incarnations of this extraordinary figure. Glorious Country is, well, glorious.” —Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World

“Glorious Country is a masterpiece. One of America’s best historians delivers an epic biography that illuminates how Frederic Church came to dominate nineteenth-century American painting with his sublime landscapes honoring the natural world. This is one of the most finely written and impressively researched biographies I’ve ever read.” —Douglas Brinkley, author of Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America

“A vivid writer and perceptive researcher, Victoria Johnson has the unique talents needed to illuminate the extraordinary life of a visionary artist, Frederic Church. Blending spirituality, science, art, and awe, Church crafted grand and intricate landscapes that placed humans within a nature teeming with life and beauty. He imagined a glorious country where Americans lived in harmony with the cosmos—a vision which now resonates as elegy.” —Alan Taylor, author of American Civil Wars and The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia

“In her usual hypnotic manner, Victoria Johnson not only reanimates the work and life of Frederic Church, she transports us to the vistas that inspired him—and which, in turn, he evoked so indelibly in his art. I doubt if Church himself could have painted a better portrait of himself.” —Harold Holzer, Winner of the Lincoln Prize

“Glorious Country is an ambitious, indispensable, and exciting biography that offers new vital interpretive analysis of this leading artist’s life and career. Johnson’s book provides a major contribution to the scholarship on nineteenth-century American art.” —Elizabeth Kornhauser, Curator Emerita, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Until now, the lack of a definitive biography has hindered a full appreciation of Frederic Church’s singular importance. Drawing on primary sources, including the artist’s own writings and that of family members, friends, and acquaintances, Victoria Johnson has vividly chronicled Church’s life as a public figure and a private individual. Glorious Country will prove indispensable to any serious consideration of one of this country’s greatest and most important artists.” —Franklin Kelly, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, National Gallery of Art (retired)

“Frederic Church was an extraordinarily talented landscape painter who often imbued his works with his perceptive observations on America’s cultural values. Victoria Johnson has done a masterful job of illuminating those ties in a riveting biography that captures the spirit of the man, his artistic career, and the swirl of personal and political events that shaped his life. Her lively prose and acute observations make this a must-read for anyone interested in American art.” —Eleanor Harvey, Senior Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Victoria Johnson is a writer and professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College in New York City. She teaches on the history of philanthropy, nonprofits, and New York City.

She is the author of American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction, the Pulitzer Prize for History, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography. It was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize.

Johnson holds a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Yale.

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