Frederic Edwin Church was an American surrealist landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut on May 4, 1826.
Church's wealthy father meant that he could pursue his interest in art from a very early age. Church became the pupil of Thomas Cole at eighteen in Catskill, New York and was elected as a member of the National Academy of Design in 1849. Soon after he sold his first major work to Hartford's Wadsworth Antheneum.
Church settled in New York and took his first pupil, William James Stillman. From the spring to autumn each year Church would travel, often by foot, sketching. He returned each winter to paint and to sell his work.
In 1860 Church bought a farm in Hudson, New York and married Isabel Carnes. He painted less and concentrated on his marriage and land. Both Church's first son and daughter died in March, [[1863] of diphtheria at a young age, but he and his wife started a new family with the birth of Frederic junior in 1865.
When he and his wife had a family of four children, they began to travel together. In 1867 they visited Europe and South Africa, allowing Church to return to painting larger works.