News from 150 Years Ago

Over the years, Gossips has shared information about renowned 19th-century landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church, who created and lived in the Persian-inspired "fortress" known as Olana, and his interactions with the city of Hudson. He bought his art supplies from a shop on Warren Street and provisions from a grocer on South Third. He and his family worshipped at the First Presbyterian Church, and he was great friends with George C. Yeisley, the church's minister. An item discovered in the Hudson Weekly Star for January 1, 1874, reveals another way Church was present in the lives of Hudsonians. It seems whenever he finished a painting, during the years he lived at Olana, it was reported in the local newspaper.

The painting mentioned here is Syria by the Sea, completed in 1873.

Frederic Edwin Church, Syria by the Sea, 1873, oil on canvas. 

Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Mrs. James F. Joy, 10.11.

The patron was James Frederick Joy, a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, who entered the railroad business in 1846 as the lawyer and general counsel to the Michigan Central Railroad. In 1872, around the time the painting was commissioned, Joy was president and a director of the Michigan Central Railroad and also the president and a director of the Chicago and Michigan Lake Shore Railroad and a director of the Detroit, Hillsdale and Indiana Railroad. In 1873, the year the painting was completed, Joy became the president and a director of the Detroit, Lansing and Lake Michigan Railroad.

The painting is now in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. It was given to the museum in 1910 by James F. Joy's widow.

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