Century Plant, JamaicaMay–September 1865
Botanical sketch of agave (century) plant in Jamaica among nearby green and brown foliage. More about this work
About this work
Botanical sketch of agave (century) plant in Jamaica among nearby green and brown foliage. Pointed leaves of the plant are rendered with greater attention and detail than the hastily painted background. Other plants visible in immediate foreground.
Text from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
- Graphite
- Pencil. Graphite has been used for drawing since the 1500s; in 1795 Nicolas-Jacques Conté mixed it with clay, so its hardness could be graded.
Frederic Edwin Church
American, 1826–1900 · Born in Hartford, Connecticut; died in New York.
Church studied with Thomas Cole in the Catskills and became the most celebrated American landscape painter of the mid-nineteenth century. He travelled to South America, the Arctic, Europe and the Near East in search of grand subjects, and pictures such as Heart of the Andes drew paying crowds when exhibited on their own in New York. Twilight in the Wilderness of 1860 is among his most admired American views. He later designed his own house, Olana, overlooking the Hudson River.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Hudson River School
American landscape painters of the mid-1800s who made wilderness their grand subject.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1917-4-675-b
- Credit
- Courtesy of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- Type
- Drawing
- Department
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
