Frederick “Fred” Edwin Church (1867-1975) [RA 1909-1978]
[Born 1867 – died 1975]

SAL record control number: 65250 ;

Record level: Person ;

Record type: Artist ;

Biography:

 Despite sharing a name with the famous American landscape painter, Church became a celebrated artist in his own right. He chose to sign his paintings “F. Edwin Church” to distinguish himself professionally as he endeavored to create his own artistic identity. Born in Brooklyn, Church’s artistic abilities were encouraged and likely tutored by his father, E. Dwight Church (1836–1908) who was an artist and art instructor in the Free School of New York before he joined the family business, Church & Dwight, manufacturers of Arm & Hammer baking soda. E. Dwight was at loss for names when his fourth son came into the world and so decided to name his youngest after an artist he admired. Church attended Stevens Preparatory School and then briefly studied architecture at Columbia College before realizing his true passion for painting. He enrolled in art classes at the Art Students League (ASL) and a few years later married Alice Slocum Nichols from Detroit in 1901. They honeymooned in Paris and their first daughter, Charlotte was born in 1902, while living in Pelham Manor in New Rochelle, New York. Church next attended the Academié Julian in Paris in 1905 where he had a portrait of his wife accepted to the 1906 Paris Salon. Returning home, they took up residence at Davenport Neck, New Rochelle. Their other children were spread throughout their life there, Elizabeth (1913–1915) who tragically died a few months after Nancy was born in 1915, and his son, Charles, born in 1920. They moved to Locust Valley, New York when he was in his early 50s and kept a co-op in the city. Church’s first known exhibition record is in 1909 at a show held for former students of the ASL. That year he joined the Salmagundi Club, and a lifetime of painting and exhibiting his art followed (outlined below). Other interests were the childhood hobby of collecting butterflies which turned into a great lifetime passion; he donated more than 1,000 specimens to the Museum of Natural History where he was a lifetime member and had two sub-species named after him. He was also a lifetime member of the New York Zoological Society. He became an expert on Japanese prints, accumulating a world-class library and collection. His membership at the Grolier Club led to friendships with other collectors such as Louis Ledoux and Howard Mansfield. Among his artist friends were Gifford Beal, Charles Bittinger, Paul Ganso, Edith and William Glackens, John Knowles Hare, Harry L. Hoffman, Rockwell Kent, Ernest Lawson, George Luks, Paul Manship, Chris E. Olsen, Howard Renwick, and Everett Werner. He outlived them all. Painting aside, Church led an active life, riding, shooting, fishing, gardening as well as playing golf and tennis—a game he played up to the astounding age of 95.

Birth: 1867 ;
Death: 1975 ;

Known for: Rooted in the traditions of Impressionism and Japonisme, Church’s work reflects modern life in the twentieth century. He is best known for his opulent portraits of women in contemporary fashions blended with elements of Japanese art and design.
Medium: oil; watercolor, pastel, charcoal, graphite, plasticene
Technique: painting, drawing, sculpture
Subjects: Portraits of women, men; genre; still life; landscapes, undersea paintings, and birds.

Training: Early influences: Paul de Longpré (1855–1911) watercolor; James McNeill Whistler(1834–1903) oil.
Instructors: Art Students League: Kenyon Cox (1856–1919), John Henry Twachtman (1853–1902) and Frank Vincent Dumond (1865–1941) among others. Academié Julian, 1905: Jean Paul Laurens (1838–1921).

Member: Resident artist member, 1909-1978 ;
Exhibited with: Salmagundi Club (1911, 1914, 1917, 1919, 1929, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1959, 1960, 1963); Ainslie Galleries; Architectural League of New York; Allied Artist of America; Art Institute of Chicago; Art Students League; Audubon Artists; Corcoran, Washington D.C.; Country Art Gallery, Locust Valley, New York; Detroit Museum of Art; Eastern Long Island Hospital, Greenport, New York; Duxbury Art Association, Duxbury, Massachusetts; Hoboken Public Library; Locust Valley Art Show—Operation Democracy; Lyme Art Association, MacDowell Club; Montross Gallery; National Academy of Design; National Arts Club; New Rochelle Art Association; The New York Junior League; Ohio State University; Paris Salon of 1906; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Salons of America; The Society of Independent Artists; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio; United States Food Administration in WWI.
Awards: 1916, Thomas B. Clark Prize, National Academy of Design for The Peacock Girl.

Milestones: 1906, a portrait accepted to the Paris Salon. His 1916 Clark prize painting, The Peacock Girl was pictured in the New York Times, Harper’s Weekly, and Vogue magazine. The painting of his daughter, Charlotte, was published in both the New York Times and St. Nicholas Magazine for Children in 1918. He collected Japanese prints and assembled an important reference library on collecting prints which he sold in 1922. The prints in his collection influenced many of his paintings, most notable in his portraits of women. He was one of the most knowledgeable collectors in New York in his time and amassed a very fine collection of prints, a portion of which he sold in 1928 to finance the building of his new house on Long Island. Some were sold to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and a large group of Hiroshige bird and flower prints were bought by Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller and are now part of the Japanese print collection at the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design. In January 1927, he had a one-man show at Montross Galleries. That spring he accompanied William Beebe with the New York Zoological Society on their expedition to Haiti where he had the opportunity to see the underwater reefs using Beebe’s diving equipment. He did a series of undersea paintings and landscapes of Haiti shown at Ainslie Galleries in December combined with those of the other two “Beebe artists” which went on to be exhibited at the Museum of Natural History. During WWI he was a Second Lieutenant in the New York National Guard, painted camouflage, and took part in the Food Administration’s war exhibit by volunteering with a group of artists to illustrate points in Herbert Hoover’s speech “Food Control—A War Measure,” which toured the country at state fairs. His painting of a man, woman and child raising the American flag before a verdant landscape of farmland was afterwards shown at the Toledo Museum and was one chosen to be produced as a half-tone poster and distributed to libraries across the country. He attended his own retrospective March 9, 1975, at the age of 98, a few months before his death. Fifty years later, in 2025, a second retrospective of his work was held at the North Shore Historical Museum in Glen Cove, New York followed by another singular show of his paintings at Preservation Long Island’s Exhibition Gallery in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. The Nassau County Museum of Art also included his portraits in three exhibitions from 2023 to 2025.

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