Exhibition: Rally 'Round the Flag: Frederic Edwin Church and the Civil War

May 26, 2011 until Sunday, October 30, 2011
Thursdays-Sundays, 11:00AM - 4:00PM.

Two weeks before the scheduled debut of Hudson River School landscape painter Frederic Church's masterwork The Icebergs, Fort Sumter was bombarded marking the start of the American Civil War. Instead of cancelling the unveiling of the painting at Goupil's Gallery, Church re-titled his masterpiece: "The North" Church's Picture of Icebergs showing his support for the northern cause. Church also pledged exhibition fees to assist the Union's Patriotic Fund for the families of Union soldiers. Less than a month later, in further support, and in response to the patriotic fever that swept the North, in May 1861 Church painted Our Banner in the Sky – a sunrise resembling a Union Flag. The image became a popular chromolithograph issued by Goupil & Co. 2011 will mark the Sesquicentennial of the fall of Fort Sumter and the start of the Civil War.

Olana's exhibition will examine Church's reaction to the conflict as an artist and how events involving his friends and colleagues affected him personally. The exhibition will include: 4 oil sketches by Church; 2 pencil sketches by Church; 2 chromolithographs after Church; and works by Isaac Hayes and John Jameson.