CMP Review 2025-12-04

December 4, 2025

When you’re part of a family that’s been doing picture study your whole life, it’s interesting when your history book talks about art. My son recently read this passage in Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People:

[Edwin Church] then decided to tackle the great showpiece of American topography, the Niagara Falls… He chose the Canadian angle of the Falls with tremendous skill, made six prolonged visits, produced hundreds of sheets of drawings and twenty-one major oil sketches. The final painting, 7 1/2 feet wide, took him six weeks and was specially exhibited on May 1, 1857 in Manhattan… It proved to be the most successful picture ever shown in the United States by far and later went on a tour of Europe. Ruskin hailed it as ‘the coming of age of American art.’

By reading these words, my son was learning about an old friend: this was already his favorite painting.

Last weekend we saw it again at the National Gallery of Art. The caption on the wall by its side included this line:

[Church’s] detailed painting combines frothing waves and water sheeting over rock surfaces. As one writer described the painting in 1857, “This is Niagara, with the roar left out!”

Standing before those words my son turned to me. “How could anyone say that?” he asked. “How could someone look at this painting and not hear the roar?”

I had no answer for him. All I could do was breathe a silent prayer thanking God that eyes can hear.

@artmiddlekauff