The Most Famous

PAINTERS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Painters. The pantheon dataset contains 2,023 Painters, 142 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the 3rd most number of Painters behind Italy, and France.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Painters of all time. This list of famous American Painters is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Painters.

1. Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956)

With an HPI of 72.86, Jackson Pollock is the most famous American Painter. His biography has been translated into 96 different languages on wikipedia.

Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an American painter. A major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, Pollock was widely noticed for his "drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface, enabling him to view and paint his canvases from all angles. It was called all-over painting and action painting, since he covered the entire canvas and used the force of his whole body to paint, often in a frenetic dancing style. This extreme form of abstraction divided critics: some praised the immediacy of the creation, while others derided the random effects. A reclusive and volatile personality, Pollock struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy. Pollock died at age 44 in an alcohol-related single-car collision when he was driving. In December 1956, four months after his death, Pollock was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. A larger, more comprehensive exhibition of his work was held there in 1967. In 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and the Tate Gallery in London.

2. Mary Cassatt (1844 - 1926)

With an HPI of 72.11, Mary Cassatt is the 2nd most famous American Painter. Her biography has been translated into 73 different languages.

Mary Stevenson Cassatt (; May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side), and lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and exhibited with the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children. She was described by Gustave Geffroy as one of "les trois grandes dames" (the three great ladies) of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot. In 1879, Diego Martelli compared her to Degas, as they both sought to depict movement, light, and design in the most modern sense.

3. Man Ray (1890 - 1976)

With an HPI of 68.03, Man Ray is the 3rd most famous American Painter. His biography has been translated into 61 different languages.

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known for his pioneering photography, and was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. He is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.

4. Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967)

With an HPI of 67.54, Edward Hopper is the 4th most famous American Painter. His biography has been translated into 51 different languages.

Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. He is one of America's most renowned artists and known for his skill in capturing American life and landscapes through his art. Born in Nyack, New York, to a middle-class family, Hopper's early exposure to art was nurtured by his parents. He studied at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, where he developed his signature style, characterized by its emphasis on solitude, light, and shadow. Hopper's work, spanning oil paintings, watercolors, and etchings, predominantly explores themes of loneliness and isolation within American urban and rural settings. His most famous painting, "Nighthawks" (1942), epitomizes his interest in the quiet, introspective moments of everyday life. Despite a slow start, Hopper achieved significant recognition by the 1920s, with his work becoming a staple in major American museums. Hopper's technique, marked by a composition of form and use of light to evoke mood, has been influential in the art world and popular culture. His paintings, often set in the architectural landscapes of New York or the serene environments of New England, convey a sense of narrative depth and emotional resonance, making him a pivotal figure in American Realism. Hopper created subdued drama out of commonplace subjects layered with a poetic meaning, inviting narrative interpretations. He was praised for "complete verity" in the America he portrayed. In 1924, Hopper married Josephine Nivison, also an artist, who played a crucial role in managing his career and served as the model for many of his figures. The couple lived a modest life in New York City, with summers spent in Cape Cod, which influenced much of Hopper's later work. Despite his success, Hopper remained a private and introspective individual, dedicated to exploring the subtleties of human experience and the American landscape. His depiction of the American scene, with its emphasis on isolation and contemplation, remains a defining aspect of his appeal and significance in the history of American art.

5. Georgia O'Keeffe (1887 - 1986)

With an HPI of 65.71, Georgia O'Keeffe is the 5th most famous American Painter. Her biography has been translated into 73 different languages.

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 – March 6, 1986) was an American modernist painter and draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements. Called the "Mother of American modernism", O'Keeffe gained international recognition for her meticulous paintings of natural forms, particularly flowers and desert-inspired landscapes, which were often drawn from and related to places and environments in which she lived. From 1905, when O'Keeffe began her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, until about 1920, she studied art or earned money as a commercial illustrator or a teacher to pay for further education. Influenced by Arthur Wesley Dow, O'Keeffe began to develop her unique style beginning with her watercolors from her studies at the University of Virginia and more dramatically in the charcoal drawings that she produced in 1915 that led to total abstraction. Alfred Stieglitz, an art dealer and photographer, held an exhibit of her works in 1917. Over the next couple of years, she taught and continued her studies at the Teachers College, Columbia University. She moved to New York in 1918 at Stieglitz's request and began working seriously as an artist. They developed a professional and personal relationship that led to their marriage on December 11, 1924. O'Keeffe created many forms of abstract art, including close-ups of flowers, such as the Red Canna paintings, that many found to represent vulvas, though O'Keeffe consistently denied that intention. The imputation of the depiction of women's sexuality was also fueled by explicit and sensuous photographs of O'Keeffe that Stieglitz had taken and exhibited. O'Keeffe and Stieglitz lived together in New York until 1929, when O'Keeffe began spending part of the year in the Southwest, which served as inspiration for her paintings of New Mexico landscapes and images of animal skulls, such as Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931) and Summer Days (1936). After Stieglitz's death in 1946, she lived in New Mexico for the next 40 years at her home and studio or Ghost Ranch summer home in Abiquiú, and in the last years of her life, in Santa Fe. In 2014, O'Keeffe's 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for $44,405,000—at the time, by far the largest price paid for any painting by a female artist. Her works are in the collections of several museums, and following her death, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum was established in Santa Fe.

6. Grant Wood (1891 - 1942)

With an HPI of 62.67, Grant Wood is the 6th most famous American Painter. His biography has been translated into 50 different languages.

Grant DeVolson Wood (February 13, 1891 – February 12, 1942) was an American artist and representative of Regionalism, best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest. He is particularly well known for American Gothic (1930), which has become an iconic example of early 20th-century American art.

7. Richard Serra (1939 - 2024)

With an HPI of 61.94, Richard Serra is the 7th most famous American Painter. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Richard Serra (November 2, 1938 – March 26, 2024) was an American artist known for his large-scale abstract sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings, whose work has been primarily associated with Postminimalism. Described as "one of his era's greatest sculptors", Serra became notable for emphasizing the material qualities of his works and exploration of the relationship between the viewer, the work, and the site. Serra pursued English literature at the University of California, Berkeley, before shifting to visual art. He graduated with a B.A. in English Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1961, where he met influential muralists Rico Lebrun and Howard Warshaw. Supporting himself by working in steel mills, Serra's early exposure to industrial materials influenced his artistic trajectory. He continued his education at Yale University, earning a B.A. in Art History and an M.F.A. in 1964. While in Paris on a Yale fellowship in 1964, he befriended composer Philip Glass and explored Constantin Brâncuși's studio, both of which had a strong influence on his work. His time in Europe also catalyzed his subsequent shift from painting to sculpture. From the mid-1960s onward, particularly after his move to New York City in 1966, Serra worked to radicalize and extend the definition of sculpture beginning with his early experiments with rubber, neon, and lead, to his large-scale steel works. His early works in New York, such as To Lift from 1967 and Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up from 1968, reflected his fascination with industrial materials and the physical properties of his chosen mediums. His large-scale works, both in urban and natural landscapes, have reshaped public interactions with art and, at times, were also a source of controversy, such as that caused by his Tilted Arc in Manhattan in 1981. Serra was married to artist Nancy Graves between 1965 and 1970, and Clara Weyergraf between 1981 and his death in 2024.

8. Norman Rockwell (1894 - 1978)

With an HPI of 61.47, Norman Rockwell is the 8th most famous American Painter. His biography has been translated into 46 different languages.

Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life (now Scout Life), calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout Is Reverent, and A Guiding Hand. Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing more than 4,000 original works in his lifetime. Most of his surviving works are in public collections. Rockwell was also commissioned to illustrate more than 40 books, including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and to paint portraits of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, as well as those of foreign figures, including Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jawaharlal Nehru. His portrait subjects also included Judy Garland. One of his last portraits was of Colonel Sanders in 1973. His annual contributions for the Boy Scouts calendars between 1925 and 1976 (Rockwell was a 1939 recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America), were only slightly overshadowed by his most popular of calendar works: the "Four Seasons" illustrations for Brown & Bigelow that were published for 17 years beginning in 1947 and reproduced in various styles and sizes since 1964. He created artwork for advertisements for Coca-Cola, Jell-O, General Motors, Scott Tissue, and other companies. Illustrations for booklets, catalogs, posters (particularly movie promotions), sheet music, stamps, playing cards, and murals (including "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "God Bless the Hills", which was completed in 1936 for the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey) rounded out Rockwell's oeuvre as an illustrator. Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime. Many of his works appear overly sweet in the opinion of modern critics, especially the Saturday Evening Post covers, which tend toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of American life. This has led to the often deprecatory adjective "Rockwellesque". Consequently, Rockwell is not considered a "serious painter" by some contemporary artists, who regard his work as bourgeois and kitsch. Writer Vladimir Nabokov stated that Rockwell's brilliant technique was put to "banal" use, and wrote in his novel Pnin: "That Dalí is really Norman Rockwell's twin brother kidnaped by gypsies in babyhood." He is called an "illustrator" instead of an artist by some critics, a designation he did not mind, as that was what he called himself. In his later years, Rockwell began receiving more attention as a painter when he chose more serious subjects such as the series on racism for Look magazine. One example of this more serious work is The Problem We All Live With, which dealt with the issue of school racial integration. The painting depicts Ruby Bridges, flanked by white federal marshals, walking to school past a wall defaced by racist graffiti. This 1964 painting was displayed in the White House when Bridges met with President Barack Obama in 2011.

9. Robert Rauschenberg (1925 - 2008)

With an HPI of 61.32, Robert Rauschenberg is the 9th most famous American Painter. His biography has been translated into 40 different languages.

Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artworks which incorporated everyday objects as art materials and which blurred the distinctions between painting and sculpture. Rauschenberg was primarily a painter and a sculptor, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking and performance. Rauschenberg received numerous awards during his nearly 60-year artistic career. Among the most prominent were the International Grand Prize in Painting at the 32nd Venice Biennale in 1964 and the National Medal of Arts in 1993. Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City and on Captiva Island, Florida, until his death on May 12, 2008.

10. Frederic Edwin Church (1826 - 1900)

With an HPI of 61.02, Frederic Edwin Church is the 10th most famous American Painter. His biography has been translated into 40 different languages.

Frederic Edwin Church (May 4, 1826 – April 7, 1900) was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, best known for painting large landscapes, often depicting mountains, waterfalls, and sunsets. Church's paintings put an emphasis on realistic detail, dramatic light, and panoramic views. He debuted some of his major works in single-painting exhibitions to a paying and often enthralled audience in New York City. In his prime, he was one of the most famous painters in the United States. Frederic Edwin Church was a direct descendant of Richard Church, a Puritan pioneer from England who accompanied Thomas Hooker on the original journey through the wilderness from Massachusetts to what would become Hartford, Connecticut. Church was the son of Eliza (1796–1883) and Joseph Church (1793–1876). Frederic had two sisters and no surviving brothers. His father was successful in business as a silversmith and jeweler and was a director at several financial firms. His mother's brother was Adrian Janes, who owned an iron foundry that constructed the U.S. Capitol Dome. The family's wealth allowed Frederic to pursue his interest in art from a very early age. In 1844, aged 18, Church became the pupil of landscape artist Thomas Cole in Catskill, New York after Daniel Wadsworth, a family neighbor and founder of the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut, introduced the two. Church studied with him for two years; by this time his talent was evident. Cole wrote that Church had "the finest eye for drawing in the world". During his time with Cole he travelled around New England and New York to make sketches, visiting East Hampton, Connecticut, Long Island, Catskill Mountain House, The Berkshires, New Haven, Connecticut, and Vermont. His first recorded sale was in 1846 to the Wadsworth Athenaeum for $130; it was a pastoral painting depicting Hooker's journey in 1636. In 1848, he was elected the youngest Associate of the National Academy of Design. He was promoted to full member the following year and began to take in his own students including Walter Launt Palmer, William James Stillman and Jervis McEntee. Romanticism was prominent in Britain and France in the early 1800s as a counter-movement to the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment. Artists of the Romantic period often depicted nature in idealized scenes that depicted the richness and beauty of nature, sometimes with emphasis on its grand scale. This tradition carried on in the works of Church, who idealizes an uninterrupted nature, highlighted by his excruciatingly detailed art. The emphasis on nature is encouraged by low horizontal lines and a preponderance of sky. Church usually "hid" his brushstrokes so that the painting surface was smooth and the painter's "personality" seemingly absent. Church was the product of the second generation of the Hudson River School, a movement in American landscape art founded by his teacher Thomas Cole. Both Cole and Church were devout Protestants, and the latter's beliefs played a role in his paintings, especially his early canvases. Hudson River School paintings were characterized by their focus on traditional pastoral settings, especially the Catskill Mountains, and their Romantic qualities. They attempted to capture the wild realism of an unsettled America that was quickly disappearing, and the appreciation of natural beauty. His American frontier landscapes show the "expansionist and optimistic outlook of the United States in the mid-nineteenth century." Church differed from Cole in the topics of his paintings: he preferred natural and often majestic scenes over Cole's propensity towards allegory—though Church's work has increasingly been re-examined in terms of themes and meanings. The Prussian explorer and scientist Alexander von Humboldt was a major influence on Church. In his Kosmos, Humboldt put forth a vision of the interconnectedness of science, the natural world, and spiritual concerns. Kosmos, which Church owned, dedicated a chapter to landscape painting; Humboldt gave an important role to the visual artist in "scientifically" portraying the diversity of nature, especially in the New World. As Charles Darwin's theory of evolution began to overturn Humboldt's ideas of unity in the 1860s, art historians have examined how Church's painting responded to this disruption in Church's world view. The English art critic John Ruskin was another important and big influence on Church. In Ruskin's Modern Painters, he emphasizes the close observation of nature: "the imperative duty of the landscape painter [is] to descend to the lowest details with undiminished attention. Every class of rock, every kind of earth, every form of cloud, must be studied with equal industry, and rendered with equal precision." This attention to detail must be combined with the artist's interpretation, impressions, and imagination to achieve great art. While Church's paintings were widely praised in the 1850s and 1860s, some critics found his detailed panoramas lacking in the imaginative or poetic. In his 1879 American Painters, George W. Sheldon wrote of Church's canvases, "It is scarcely necessary to ... explain what their principal defect is, because, by this time, that defect must have been recognized by almost every intelligent American lover of art. It consists in the elaboration of details at the expense of the unity and force of sentiment.... They are faithful and beautiful, but they are not so rich as they might be in the poetry, the aroma, of art. The higher and spiritual verities of Nature are the true home of landscape art." Some of Church's paintings relate to, and influenced, the luminist landscape style as well. Luminist art tends to emphasize horizontals, use non-diffuse light, and hide brushstrokes such that the painter's presence, or "personality", is less apparent to the viewer. An exhibition book considers Church's Morning in the Tropics and Twilight in the Wilderness to highlight the style's "meticulous draftsmanship and intense colors", while Cotopaxi and The Parthenon "exemplify the style ... in their panoramic structure". Nevertheless, Church is not considered a primarily luminist artist. Church began his career by painting classic Hudson River School scenes of New York and New England, but by 1850, he had settled in New York. He exhibited his art at the American Art Union, the Boston Art Club, and (most impressively for a young artist) the National Academy of Design. His method consisted of creating paintings in his studio based on sketches in nature. In the earlier years of his career, Church's style was reminiscent of that of his teacher, Thomas Cole, and epitomized the Hudson River School's founding styles. As his style progressed he departed from Cole's approach: he painted in more elaborate detail and his compositions became more adventurous in format, sometimes with dramatic light effects. Church quickly earned a reputation as a traveler-artist, with early domestic painting and sketching trips to the White Mountains, western Massachusetts, the Catskills, Hartford, Conn, Niagara, Virginia, Kentucky, and Maine. He made two trips to South America in 1853 and 1857 and stayed predominantly in Quito, visiting the volcanoes and cities of modern day Colombia and Ecuador, and crossing the isthmus of Panama. The first trip was with businessman Cyrus West Field, who financed the voyage, hoping to use Church's paintings to lure investors to his South American ventures. Church was inspired by Alexander von Humboldt's exploration of the continent in the early 1800s; Humboldt had challenged artists to portray the "physiognomy" of the Andes. After Humboldt's Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America was published in 1852, Church jumped at the chance to travel and study in Humboldt's footsteps. When Church returned to South America in 1857 with painter Louis Rémy Mignot, he added to his sketches of the area. After both trips, Church had produced a number of landscapes of Ecuador and the Andes, such as The Andes of Ecuador (1855), Cayambe (1858), The Heart of the Andes (1859), and Cotopaxi (1862). The Heart of the Andes, Church's most famous painting, pictures several elements of topography combined into an idealistic, broad portrait of nature. The painting was very large, yet highly detailed; every species of plant and animal is identifiable and numerous climate zones appear at once. As he had with Niagara before, Church debuted The Heart of the Andes in a single-painting exhibition in New York City in 1859. Thousands of people paid to see the painting, with the painting's huge floor-based frame playing the part of a window looking out on the Andes. The audience sat on benches to view the piece, sometimes using opera glasses to get close, and Church strategically arranged the room to illuminate the painting with the light from overhead skylights. The work was an instant success. Church eventually sold it for $10,000, at that time the highest price ever paid for a work by a living American artist. Church's friendship with Isaac Israel Hayes, a prominent arctic explorer, stimulated the artist's interest in the arctic regions. In 1859, Church and his good friend Rev. Louis Legrand Noble traveled to Newfoundland and Labrador. The journey was chronicled in Noble's book After Icebergs with a Painter (1861), published shortly before Church's painting "The Icebergs" went on display. By 1860, Church was the most renowned American artist. In his prime, Church was a commercial as well as an artistic success. Church's art was very lucrative; he was reported to be worth half a million dollars at his death in 1900. In 1861, at the start of the Civil War, Church was inspired to paint Our Banner in the Sky by a sunset featuring red, white, and blue that he believed was a symbol that "the heavens indicated their support for the United States by reflecting the nation's colors in the setting sun". A lithograph was made from it and sold to benefit the families of Union soldiers. In 1863, he was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1860, Church bought a farm near Hudson, New York and married Isabel Mortimer Carnes (born 1836, of Dayton, Ohio), whom he had met during the New York exhibition of The Heart of the Andes. They soon started a family, but their two-year-old son Herbert and five-month-old daughter Emma both died of diphtheria in March 1865. Still grief stricken, Church, his wife, and a young artist they befriended traveled to Jamaica. Church sketched while Isabel made a collection of pressed Jamaican ferns. He and his wife started a new family with the birth of Frederic Joseph in 1866, followed by Theodore Winthrop in 1869, Louis Palmer in 1870 and Isabel Charlotte ("Downie") in 1871. In late 1867, Church began the longest period of travel of his career. That fall he and his family went to Europe, moving through London and Paris fairly quickly. From Marseille they went to Alexandria, Egypt, but Church did not visit the pyramids, perhaps being afraid to leave his family alone. Passing through Jaffa, they arrived at Beirut, where they spent four months. They stayed with American missionaries, including David Stuart Dodge. In February 1868 Church travelled with Dodge to the city of Petra by camel from Jerusalem. There he sketched the Al Khazneh tomb, which became the subject of one of his important later works, El Khasné, Petra (1874). Later that spring the family visited Damascus and Baalbek, then sailed the Aegean Sea with a stop in Constantinople. Back in southern Europe by summer, they wintered in Rome. There were many American artists in Rome that year, and they joined several artist/friends, including Sanford Robinson Gifford, Jervis McEntee and other friends who were also living in Rome. While in Rome, Church learned fresco painting, and made a collection of "Old Masters" paintings. However, apparently Europe on the whole did not seem to interest Church as it did most American artists of the 19th century, many of whom traveled there to experience the Western artistic heritage. Leaving his expanded family in Rome with friends, Frederic made a two-week visit to stay in Athens ended the journey in April 1869. At Athens the Parthenon impressed him, and he sketched and painted it energetically. The Churches left Rome in May 1869, and made their way home via Paris and England, arriving home by the end of June. Before departing the United States for that trip, Church purchased the 18 acres (7.3 ha) on the hilltop above his Hudson farmland, which he had long wanted for its magnificent views of the Hudson River and the Catskills. In 1870, he began the construction of a Persian-inspired mansion on the hilltop, and the family moved into the home in the summer of 1872. Today this estate is conserved as the Olana State Historic Site. Richard Morris Hunt was consulted early on in the plans for the mansion at Olana, but after the Churches' trip, the English-born American architect Calvert Vaux was hired to complete the project. Church was deeply involved in the process, even completing his own architectural sketches for its design. This highly personal and eclectic building incorporated many of the design ideas that he had acquired during his travels. In one letter of the period, he wrote "I have made about 1 3/4 miles of road this season, opening entirely new and beautiful views. I can make more and better landscapes in this way than by tampering with canvas and paint in the studio." He devoted much of his energy during his last twenty years to Olana. Church had been enormously successful as an artist. In his last decades, illness limited Church's ability to paint. By 1876, Church was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis, making painting difficult. He eventually painted with his left hand and continued to produce works, although at a much slower pace. He still taught painting as Cole had before him. Two students were Walter Launt Palmer, son of his close friend Erastus Dow Palmer, and Howard Russell Butler. In later life he often wintered in Mexico, where he taught Butler. Spending time at Olana and in Mexico, Church was less exposed to trends in New York City. He kept a studio there into the 1880s, but it was usually sublet to Martin Johnson Heade. His wife Isabel had been ill for years, and she died on May 12, 1899, at the home of their late friend and patron, William H. Osborn, on Park Avenue in New York. Less than a year later, on April 7, 1900, at the age of 73, Church also died at the home of Osborn's widow. Frederic and Isabel were buried in the family plot at Spring Grove Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut. In the last decades of his life Church's fame dwindled, and by his death in 1900 there was little interest in his work. His paintings were seen as part of an "old-fashioned and discredited" school that was too devoted to details. His reputation improved with a 1945 exhibition devoted to the Hudson River School at the Art Institute of Chicago, and that year the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin revisited the original reception of The Heart of the Andes. In 1960 art historian David C. Huntington completed a dissertation on Church that explored his influences and milieu. By 1966 he had written a monograph on Church and organized the first exhibition devoted to Church since his death, for the National Collection of Fine Arts. Huntington recognized Church's estate as his greatest artwork and spearheaded the effort to preserve Olana when the property, which had been preserved largely as Church created it by later generations of the family, was threatened with destruction. He spearheaded a two-year campaign to save Frederic Church's Olana, resulting in a public-private partnership that created Olana State Historic Site. Church's legacy was rekindled; American museums began to acquire his works, and by 1979 Church's The Icebergs sold for $2.5 million, then the third-highest auction for any work of art. The next year the National Gallery of Art held a major exhibition, American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1825–1875, which positioned Church as the leading American painter of his time. Church's paintings, more confident and on a grander scale than those of his contemporaries, uniquely captured the spirit of an optimistic American people who associated the landscape of the New World with manifest destiny. Art historian Barbara Novak wrote that Church was "a paradigm of the artist who becomes the public voice of a culture, summarizing its beliefs, embodying its ideas, and confirming its assumptions." Olana State Historic Site is now owned and operated by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Taconic Region, and with its curatorial work, visitor services, and external relations managed by The Olana Partnership, a private, non-profit organization. In 1999, just before the centenary of Church's death, The Olana Partnership established the Frederic Church Award to honor individuals and organizations who make extraordinary contributions to American art and culture. Avery, Kevin J. (1993). Church's Great Picture: The Heart of the Andes. Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-9994925193. Harvey, Eleanor Jones; Church, Frederic Edwin (2002). The Voyage of the Icebergs: Frederic Church's Arctic Masterpiece. Dallas Museum of Art. ISBN 9780300095364. Howat, John K.; Church, Frederic Edwin (2005). Frederic Church. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300109887. Huntington, David C. (1966). The Landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church: Vision of an American Era. George Braziller. LCCN 66-16675. Kelly, Franklin (1985). Frederic Edwin Church and the North American Landscape, 1845–1860 (Thesis). ProQuest 303390102. Kelly, Franklin (1988). Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape. Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-87474-592-4. Kelly, Franklin (1989). Frederic Edwin Church. National Gallery of Art. ISBN 978-0874744583. Wilmerding, John (1980). American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850–1875. Washington: National Gallery of Art. ISBN 9780691002804. Media related to Frederic Edwin Church at Wikimedia Commons Frederic Edwin Church works at National Gallery of Art Timeline of Art History Metropolitan Museum of Art The Olana Partnership American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Church (see index) Art and the empire city: New York, 1825–1861, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (full PDF), which contains material on Church Lyrics to the song "Olana" by Marc Cohn, about Church and the Olana estate, from Church's perspective. Archived July 25, 2021, at the Wayback Machine Art Renewal.org Frederic Edwin Church Gallery at MuseumSyndicate Archived August 28, 2021, at the Wayback Machine

People

Pantheon has 159 people classified as American painters born between 1738 and 1977. Of these 159, 18 (11.32%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American painters include Joseph Kosuth, Jasper Johns, and Julian Schnabel. The most famous deceased American painters include Jackson Pollock, Mary Cassatt, and Man Ray. As of April 2024, 18 new American painters have been added to Pantheon including Sanford Robinson Gifford, Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, and Anna Lea Merritt.