# Niagara Falls by Moonlight

**Frederic Edwin Church** (American, 1826–1900)  
probably 1856  
graphite and white gouache  
Sheet: 11.6 x 16.4 cm (4 9/16 x 6 7/16 in.)

Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1976.30. [The museum's record](https://clevelandart.org/art/1976.30).

## About this work

By the time Frederic E. Church executed this study of the Canadian side of Horseshoe Falls, Niagara Falls was already an icon of both American art and the American nation. Tourists and artists flocked to the falls in pursuit of a firsthand experience of the sublime, a sensation of elation and terror that portrayals of Niagara Falls had notorious difficulty reproducing. Church’s celebrated oil painting The Great Fall, Niagara (1857) was one of the few depictions believed to capture the fall’s power in pictorial terms. Like many artists of the Hudson River School, Church used drawings made on site to preserve the visual memory of the place he intended to paint in oil. Cleveland’s sheet was possibly executed during one of the four trips he took to the falls in 1856 to prepare for Niagara. As a night scene, this study in light and shadow is unusual among Church’s drawings. The dark brown paper enhances the image’s nocturnal quality and allowed Church to render the atmospheric effects of mist and clouds. He used white gouache not only as a highlight, but also to define the luminous forms of water and vapor, crafting the landscape’s substance out of negative and positive space. On the picture’s left-hand side, Church represented the man-made Terrapin Tower in shadowy miniature, a testament to his interest in site-specific details—and also, perhaps, a reminder of the diminutive status of human creation in the face of awesome natural forces.

_Text from the Cleveland Museum of Art._

Frederic Edwin Church painted this (probably 1856), aged about 25. It is now at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

### How it was made

- **Opaque watercolour.** Watercolour made opaque with white or chalk and laid in flat, even layers. Persian and Indian painters ground their colours from minerals, applied them with the finest brushes and burnished the finished page.
- **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](https://www.ochreeditions.com/artists/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._

## Facts

- Type: Drawing
- Culture: America
- The artist was about 25
- Real size: about 4½ × 6½ in (12 × 16 cm). The original is small: even the 8 × 10 in print shows it larger than life.
- Century: 19th century
- Movement: [Hudson River School](https://www.ochreeditions.com/movements/hudson-river-school)
- Colour: brown
- Rights: public domain (CC0 1.0); free to use for any purpose.

## Get it

- Free download, full resolution: https://img.ochreeditions.com/m/702.jpg?dl=1
- Image: https://img.ochreeditions.com/a/702/1920.jpg
- Giclée reproduction on Hahnemühle Photo Rag: 8 × 10 in $28; 11 × 14 in $38; 12 × 16 in $42; 16 × 20 in $56; 18 × 24 in $68
- Framed reproduction: 8 × 10 in $78; 11 × 14 in $98; 12 × 16 in $108; 16 × 20 in $138; 18 × 24 in $164
- Canvas reproduction: 8 × 10 in $58; 11 × 14 in $72; 12 × 16 in $79; 16 × 20 in $98
- Print-ready file: 8 × 10 in $2; 11 × 14 in $2; 12 × 16 in $3; 16 × 20 in $3; 18 × 24 in $3

Sizes stop where the museum's file would print below 150 pixels per inch. Everything sold is a reproduction, made to order. [Order a print](https://www.ochreeditions.com/art/niagara-falls-by-moonlight-cma-148774).