Frederick S. Church

Church was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1842, and later moved to New York to pursue a career as a painter. He began as an illustrator for Harper's Weekly, putting his career on hold during the American Civil War to serve in the Union army from 1859-1862. He went to Chicago after the war and studied at the Chicago Art Academy with Walter Shirlaw. His studies at the National Academy of Design in New York led to his appointment as an Academician in 1885. Most of his paintings were of animal subjects, and he was especially fond of endowing animals with an aspect of anthropomorphism. Church's work received a fair amount of patronage from the 1880s through his death, and he was friends with a number of prominent New York artists, including William Merritt Chase. He died in 1924.