Storm in the Mountains (1847): Art, History and Details

Storm in the Mountains (1847) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Dominating this composition is a lightning-blasted tree embodying nature's awe-inspiring power and endless cycle of life and death. A popular motif because of these associations, the blasted tree was favored by many landscape painters like Church, who prominently featured it here.

Object facts

• Title: Storm in the Mountains
• Date: 1847
• Creator attribution: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900)
• Culture: United States
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 98.7 x 86.4 x 9.2 cm (38 7/8 x 34 x 3 5/8 in.); Unframed: 75.5 x 62.8 cm (29 3/4 x 24 3/4 in.); Former: 94.5 x 81.5 x 9 cm (37 3/16 x 32 1/16 x 3 9/16 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1969.52

A detail from the museum

Church's spectacular home and studio, named Olana, is preserved as a New York State Historical Site.

Collection credit

Gift of various donors by exchange and Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Howat, John K., Frederic Church. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
• "Visions of Landscape East and West." Asia Vol. 4, No. 5 (January/February 1982): pp. 24-29.
• Carr, Gerald L. Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonné of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.