Heart of the Andes, 1859 Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Frederic Edwin Church also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting Heart of the Andes is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

After adding your artwork to the shopping cart, you will be able to check the delivery price using the Estimate Shipping and Tax tool.

The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

A small white cross, almost lost in the green, steadies the lower left corner. Nearby, two tiny figures pause on a path, dwarfed by trees, water, mountain, weather. That detail matters. Frederic Edwin Church gives us the Andes as an immense living system, yet he refuses to make it empty spectacle. Human presence is minute, devotional, and vulnerable.

Heart of the Andes was painted after Church’s journeys to South America in 1853 and 1857, travels encouraged by his reading of Alexander von Humboldt. Rather than record one exact site, Frederic Edwin Church gathers many observations into a single panoramic vision: tropical growth in the foreground, temperate valleys beyond, and, far left, the cold white cone of a snow mountain. Humboldt’s idea of nature as interconnected order is felt everywhere. Nothing sits idle. Water falls, mist rises, palms and ferns push outward, clouds pass, light shifts.

Look at the structure. Dark foliage frames the scene at both sides, like curtains in a theatre, while the river and waterfall open a silver passage into the distance. Across the middle, the valley stretches horizontally, calm and golden, before the mountains lift in long, smoky diagonals. Church handles scale with a showman’s instinct. He knew this painting would be seen as an event; it was once displayed in a darkened room, lit by concealed gaslight, and viewers were even encouraged to use opera glasses. One can understand why. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York USA, it still has the pull of a vast window.

Color carries the climates. In front, greens are deep, wet, and crowded, touched with umber shadow and sharp yellow sparks. Further back, the valley warms into ochre and sienna. Above, cool violets and blue-greys soften the mountain mass, while the snow peak keeps its remote, crystalline authority. Light is not theatrical in the manner of Turner, though Turner comes to mind in the atmospheric dissolving of distance. Church is clearer, more botanical, more American in his appetite for inventory.

Technique shifts with distance. Leaves near the right edge are picked out with crisp, separate touches; the far ranges are rubbed and veiled until geology becomes weather. Notice the pale trunk on the right, bending slightly, its white bark catching sun against dense green. It is a small vertical accent, but it gives the foreground a bodily presence.

Perhaps the unexpected pleasure is how noisy the silence feels: falling water, insects, humid leaves, the weight of warm air before the chill of the heights. Church made a grand public sensation, certainly. Yet the painting’s deepest charm lies in its patient looking, its conviction that the world is inexhaustible if we learn how to see it.