Olana State Historic Site

Frederic Edwin Church was one of the premier landscape painters of the nineteenth century, accomplishing international fame, critical acclaim, and great financial success in his own lifetime. Church studied with Thomas Cole in Catskill, NY, then established a studio in New York City, from which he traveled widely on sketching expeditions. His resulting monumental canvases linked American identity to the landscape of the new world.

In 1860, Church established his family home on a farm in the Hudson River Valley, which he and wife Isabel would later name Olana. He spent forty years perfecting his vision for Olana, considered his greatest artistic masterpiece.

Church was intimately involved in designing all aspects of the 250-acre naturalistic landscape, which exists today as one of the most intact artist-designed properties in the United States. His large-scale composition included more than five miles of carriage roads that pass through woodlands, fields and a farm complex, so that visitors could travel through and experience Olana’s crafted foreground against a backdrop of sublime and far-reaching views.

In 1870, the Churches, inspired by a recent trip to the Middle East, began building a house on a high point of their property, working with architect Calvert Vaux to design a building that incorporated features from dwellings they admired during their journey. Church was involved in all aspects of the building’s design and ornamentation; he made hundred of sketches for interior and exterior stenciling, and mixed the color scheme for the building on his palette. Completed in 1872, the building was enlarged in 1889 with the addition of a studio wing.

The house contains many canvases by Church, as well as works by friends, a collection of old master paintings, and furniture and decorative arts that Frederic and Isabel Church collected over the course of their lives. Today the experience of visiting the house remains remarkably unchanged, for the rooms look much as they did in the 1890s. From these intricately-decorated interiors visitors can look out on panoramic views of the Taconic Hills, the Hudson River, and the Catskill Mountains, vistas that are also much like those that Frederic Church enjoyed.