Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826-1900) Valley of the Lebanon, 1869 Oil on Canvas 21-1/2 x 36 inches (54.6 x 91.4 cm) Signed and dated lower left: F.E.Church / 1869 PROVENANCE: James M. Walker, Chicago, by late 1869; Kennedy Galleries, New York, before 1980; Private Collection, Connecticut; Kennedy Galleries, New York, 1985; George A. Strichman, New Rochelle, New York, acquired from the above; Vose Galleries, Boston, Massachusetts; The Crane Collection, Boston, Massachusetts, 1989; Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1993. EXHIBITED: Goupil-Knoedler Gallery, New York, November 1869- 1870; (probably) Century Association, New York, January 1870 (as Landscape with Rain in Central Asia); Brooklyn Art Association, New York, March 1870 (no. 248); Chicago Academy of Design, Chicago, Illinois, November-December 1870; Chicago Interstate Industrial Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, September-October 1875 (no. 27); Kennedy Galleries, New York, "People, Places and Things: American Paintings 1750-1980," November 1980-January 1981; New York, Kennedy Galleries, "American Portrait, Landscape, Seascape, Still Life and Genre Paintings," November 1-December 31, 1983, no. 28; (possibly) Quinlan Art Center, Gainesville, Georgia, April-May 1986; Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, "Frederic E. Church--under changing skies: oil sketches and drawings from the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt," 1992-1993. LITERATURE: Frederic Church to William H. Osborn, Perugia, September 29, 1868 (David C. Huntington Archives, Olana); Frederic Church to William H. Osborn, Rome, November 9, 1868 (David C. Huntington Archives, Olana); Frederic Church to William H. Osborn, Rome, January 1, 1869 (David C. Huntington Archives, Olana); Frederic Church to William H. Osborn, Rome, January 23, 1869 (David C. Huntington Archives, Olana); Frederic Church to William H. Osborn, Rome, February 4, 1869 (David C. Huntington Archives, Olana); Frederic Church to William H. Osborn, Rome, February 24, 1869 (David C. Huntington Archives, Olana); Frederic Church to William H. Osborn, Athens, April 14, 1869 (David C. Huntington Archives, Olana); Frederic Church to William H. Osborn, Rome, May 1, 1869 (David C. Huntington Archives, Olana); New York Evening Post, November 15, 1869, 1 (as View of the Ruins of Lebanon, Palestine); Boston Daily Advertiser, November 17, 1869, p. 1; Albion, New York, November 20, 1869, p. 702 (as View of the Ruins of Lebanon, Palestine); Frederic Church to William H. Osborn, Hudson, November 5, 1869 (David C. Huntington Archives, Olana); Independent, New York, November 25, 1869, p. 2 (as Mt. Lebanon); Columbian Register, New Haven, Connecticut, December 4, 1869, p. 1; Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1869, p. 5 (as The Valley of Lebanon); Independent, New York, December 23, 1869, p. 2 (as Anti-Lebanon); Eastern State Journal, White Plains, New York, January 7, 1870, p. 2; New York Herald, January 9, 1870, p. 3 (as The Valley of Lebanon); New York Evening Post, January 10, 1870, p. 3; Albion, New York, January 15, 1870, p. 38; New York Evening Post, March 28, 1870, p. 2; Chicago Tribune, November 23, 1870, p.4 (as Anti-Lebanon); Chicago Times, November 23, 1870, pp. 2-3 (as Anti Linbanus); Chicago Tribune, November 23, 1870, p. 4 (as Anti-Lebanon); Chicago Republican, November 23, 1870, p. 4; Chicago Inter-Ocean, September 8, 1875, p. 8; Chicago Daily Tribune, September 10, 1875, p. 5; Chicago Evening Journal, September 13, 1875, p. 4; Kennedy Galleries, People, Places and Things: American Paintings 1750-1980, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1980, no. 2, illustrated (as Baalbeck) Kennedy Galleries, New York, American Portrait, Landscape, Seascape, Still Life and Genre Paintings, exhibition catalogue, 1983, no. 28, illustrated; J.L. Yarnall, W.H. Gerdts, The National Museum of American Art's Index to American Art Exhibition Catalogues from the Beginning through the 1876 Centennial Year, 6 volume set, vol. 1, Boston, Massachusetts, 1986, p. 719; F.W. Kelly, G.L. Carr, The Early Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, 1845-1854, exhibition catalogue, Fort Worth, Texas, 1987, pp. 21n25, p22n26; J. Davis, "Frederic Church's 'Sacred Geography," Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1, Washington, D.C., 1987, p. 91; F.W. Kelly, Frederic Edwin Church, exhibition catalogue, Washington, D.C., 1989, p.68; G.L. Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonné of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site, 2 volume set, vol 1, Cambridge, England, 1994, p. 365; J. Davis, The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture, Princeton, New Jersey, 1996, p. 178 (illustrated), and pp. 180, 182, 184, 197, 202, 239-40, 242; G.L. Carr, In Search of the Promised Land: Frederic Edwin Church and Exploration, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2000, p. 91; K.J. Myers, Frederic Church: A Painter's Pilgrimage, exhibition catalogue, Detroit, Michigan, 2017, p. 85, no. 10, illustrated; G.L. Carr, "Snowy mountains, a sapphire sea, and green trees" / "Astounding are those ruins, and beautifully situated": The American Painter Frederic Edwin Church and Lebanon (American University of Beirut and American University at Cairo presses; forthcoming), passim. We are grateful to Dr. Gerald L. Carr for providing the following essay on this lot, which will be included in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's oil paintings: Frederic Church painted Valley of the Lebanon during his only transatlantic sojourn, from November 1867 to June 1869. Usually accompanied by his wife, Isabel, her widowed mother, Emma Osgood Carnes, and the couple's young son, Frederic Joseph Church, the Churches' principal overseas destination was Ottoman Syria. Then and still often termed "the Holy Land," it encompassed present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. Beirut, Lebanon, was his and his family's first sustained place of residence abroad, January to May 1868. During May 1868, returning to Beirut from Damascus, Mr. and Mrs. Church spent eight days at Baalbek, the ruined ancient Roman city in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. In a private letter from mid-1868 printed by a Philadelphia newspaper in February 1869, Church wrote that he wished they could have stayed weeks longer at Baalbek. His Mediterranean studio paintings of the late 1860s onward harken Old Masters as well as some recent painters, notably J. M. W. Turner, David Roberts, and Thomas Cole, and are generally meditative in mood, not morose. The southerly portions of Church's overseas activities of 1867-69 were commemorated in a touring U.S. museum exhibition organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts, "Frederic Edwin Church: A Painter's Pilgrimage," in 2017-18. Church began the present work in Rome during the winter of 1868-69, concurrently with his seven-foot Damascus (1869; destroyed 1888), but finished it sooner. The picture's same-size precursor, Ruins of Baalbek / The Lebanon Mountains (1868; private collection), commissioned by a congenial American whom Church met in Beirut, reoriented (so to say) Mr. Church. That tender composed scene combines inland and coastal ingredients. Its successor, Valley of the Lebanon, is bolder. An inland desert ambience with nearby upright and fallen ruins, distant castle, and incipient moonrise, Valley of the Lebanon is both explicitly and inventively Baalbekian. Yet that image, too, is purposefully reticent. It seems to me that his Ruins of Baalbek / The Lebanon Mountains affirms Church's intentional transformative artistic purposes of 1868, and Valley of the Lebanon his continued aesthetic and thematic renovations from 1868–69. Because of problems with the painting's prospective English buyer, Church consigned Valley of the Lebanon to the art market through his New York art dealer, Michael Knoedler (1823-78), November 1869-ca. January 1870, by which means it became, Church's first Mediterranean-theme work displayed in the U.S. From there, James M. Walker (1820-81), a Chicago railway entrepreneur, bought it. After Church had showed it in the New York area once or twice more, Walker, in turn, displayed the picture in Chicago twice during the next few years. In 1860s and 1870s exhibition catalogues and press notices, the painting received at least five titles besides Valley of the Lebanon and Valley of Lebanon—View of the Ruins of Lebanon, Palestine; Mt. Lebanon; Syrian Landscape; Anti-Lebanon; and Anti-Lebanus—all indicative but insufficient. The depicted scene's correlations with Baalbek are evident in two respects especially. Foremost is Church's framed on-site Baalbek oil study (May 1868) (Fig. 1), looking east–northeast from the northwest corner of the archeological site's acropolis (as it has been termed since the late nineteenth century). That image portrays the two major upright ruins at Baalbek: on the same level, the six-column Temple of Jupiter, as it is now designated, near left; and, below, the columnar and walled so-called Temple of Bacchus. There, a lone woman wearing dark red garb and a headscarf stands in front of the nearer ruin, facing the artist. Since the picture returned to Olana, myself, the former Olana site manager, the late James A. Ryan, and curators there have assumed that the depicted person is Isabel Church. Months later, for the studio canvas, using the same perspective, Church condensed the Jupiter temple's six upright Corinthian columns to its nearest (westernmost) three, while dramatizing factual late afternoon lighting as he shuffled ground levels and details. The studio picture's nearest two upright columns are his oil study's first and fourth columns, while the tiny triangular shadow cast atop the studio picture's farthest—third—column by its capital repeats the shadow shown atop the farthest—omitted—sixth column in the oil study. At lower right, headed right to left, a laden camel, Arab rider, and Arab attendant slowly traverse the scene. Secondly, the crumbled fragments in the canvas's left foreground approximate Church's unframed Baalbek Bacchus temple oil study (Fig. 2). The scene comprises large-size fallen fragments on the temple's interior floor--long since cleared and cleaned--facing eastward. That deft, unfinished pencil-and-oil vignette is one of Church's finest plein-air transcripts of any subject. At the Goupil-Knoedler Gallery, Church's Valley of the Lebanon was well received. Mr. Knoedler, or his assistants for him, would have voiced it there for viewers, much as Church himself had with Ruins at Baalbek / The Lebanon Mountains for guests at his Rome studio a year earlier, but with a crucial difference: in Manhattan, Valley of the Lebanon was for sale. Prior to its debut, the 1869 canvas perched briefly at Church's Manhattan studio in the 10th Street Studio Building, then co-habited by his colleague Martin Johnson Heade (1820-1904). There, Heade probably interpreting, a journalist from White Plains, New York (cited above), summarized it: The only picture by Mr. Church we saw—and which will be placed on exhibition in Goupil's gallery during the present week—is an effective composition of Anti-Lebanon scenery, made up from materials gathered in the Lebanon valley, in Syria. The ruins depicted are a portion of the great ruins of Baalbec [sic], but are not taken from an actual view. The last rays of the setting sun are gilding the tops of three columns—a fragment of the great Temple of the Sun which once stood in this historical valley. Over the low mountain range, near the right side of the picture, is seen the silvery glow which precedes the rising of the moon. In the left foreground rests a shattered map of entablature, and across an arched bridge, in the falling twilight, comes a single camel, bearing its solitary rider. A writer for the New York Independent (cited above) soon thoughtfully synopsized Church's picture, albeit, by today's standards, also condescendingly: ". . . Another very interesting picture in Mr. Knoedler's gallery is a reflection from Mount Lebanon, brought home from the Orient by Mr. Church. It may or may not be a good topographical landscape, and we do not suppose it is; but it is imbued with Oriental sentiment and satisfies the cravings of the imagination. In the general aspects of the picture we recognize [sic] none of the traces of Mr. Church's western pictures. The whole atmosphere is different, the treatment is tender, subdued, and solemn; it is the dead East, not the living West. The color is laid on very thin, and the texture is slight and feeble; but the effect is soft and soothing. Without the figure of the Arab, or the camel, or the ruined pillar or the overthrown shrine, we should know that the scene represented belonged to a region which had outlived its old civilization, and had not awakened to a new one. . . " Besides those perceptive responses by local press writers, in early December 1869 a Manhattan correspondent for the Chicago Tribune newspaper, signing himself "Fanchon," waxed eloquent on "Church's Pictures of the Orient" (cited above). He meant Church's Damascus, not yet publicly presented in the U.S., though the writer had seen it at Church's studio, and Valley of the Lebanon, by then on view at Goupil-Knoedler. Concluding his discussion with an excerpt from Lord Byron's poem, "The Giour" (1813), "Fanchon" termed Church's two new paintings "the promised art event of the season" in New York: ". . . The "Valley of the Lebanon" presents a scene so lonely and so sad, that but for the glow of its evening sky, ‘twould have called no color from the palette, save sombre grays; and no emotions beyond sighs. Across the dark archway of an ancient bridge comes slowly and in shadow, the traveller [sic] and the wearied camel. Beyond them stretches eastward, line upon line of solitude, to where a dawn of moonlight shows the horizon, and (it may be) the dim boundaries of never-to-be-recalled departures. But the west has ruddy tintings; and the three crumbling columns that overlook the plain catch a sunset's bright reflection, as the sentinels catch the watchword." And the artist, who best among all our artists, gives the ideal through the real, has not failed in this threshold-picture of his views of Palestine to recall: "That fearful bloom / That hue which haunts it to the tomb, / Expression's last receding ray; A gilded halo hovering round decay / The farewell beam of feeling passed away! / Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth / Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth." Church fondly remembered Valley of the Lebanon for years afterward. In the late 1880s, for a former pupil, close friend, colleague, and occasional collaborator at Olana, Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932), Church painted a smaller-size, subdued version of the scene, nowadays titled Ruins at Baalbek (dated 1889; Santa Barbara, California, Museum of Art). A related, uninscribed oil study by Church, usually dated to 1868, and since 1917 with Cooper-Hewitt collections, New York (acc. no. 1917-4-1081), should be re-assigned to ca. 1888. --Dr. Gerald L. 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