First Biography of Frederic Edwin Church Published in 2026

Victoria Johnson's "Glorious Country" (2026) is the first proper biography of 19th-century American painter Frederic Edwin Church. Church, a Hudson River School artist, expanded the movement's scope by incorporating global views and dramatic staging, as seen in works like "Heart of the Andes" (1859) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which he helped found in 1870. He conveyed national anxieties about slavery and war through landscapes. The biography covers his adventurous travels, personal tragedies including the death of two children, and his later decline in artistic fashion. Johnson's book is published by Scribner.