Aurora Borealis

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Frederick Edwin Church

Aurora Borealis 1865 Frederick Edwin Church

Continuing our discussion on the Northern Lights and other light phenomena, we found this image painted by Frederick Church of the Aurora Borealis in 1865. The story behind the painting is as interesting as the painting is exceptional.

Church’s pupil, Isaac Israel Hayes, was also an intrepid explorer. Hayes witnessed the Northern Lights while on a polar expedition in 1861, with his ship locked in the ice. He sketched the extraordinary light effects and, upon return to New York, passed his sketch and description along to Church. From them, Church created this oil painting.

As this was the time of the Civil War, the auroras, seen only in the far north, were seen as signs of God’s disapproval of the Confederacy and its support for slavery. The Smithsonian American Art Museum (which houses the painting) writes: “Viewers understood that Church’s paintin…