Although the notion of the sublime in art came to prominence in the Romantic era as a particular focus of the poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850), the earliest conceptions of the sublime predate the Romantic era and may be traced to the writing of Joseph Addison (1672–1719) at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Beginning with the Spectator issue number 411 published Saturday, June 21, 1712, Joseph Addison began a philosophical inquiry into the particular form of human pleasure that results from the sense of sight and its playing upon the imagination. Addison introduces his topic thusly:
Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses. It fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas. . . . It is this sense which furnishes the imagination with its ideas; so that by the pleasures of the imagination or fancy (which I shall use promiscuously) I here mean such as arise from visible objects, either when we have them actually in our view, or when we call up their ideas in our minds by paintings, statues, descriptions, or any the like occasion.1
In a series of eleven essays published in the Spectator June 21—July 3, 1712, Addison explores the causes—as he sees them—of the human pleasure that proceeds from beholding art. His study lays out early conceptions of the sublime in art, later expanded upon by writers like Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and, most notably, John Ruskin. Frederic Edwin Church was heavily influenced by the writings of Ruskin, who in turn was influenced by Burke, Johnson, and Addison. Addison therefore plays a key role in founding the prestigious line of art criticism culminating in John Ruskin and his influence on Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). My goal in this paper is to study Joseph Addison’s seminal ideas on greatness in art, and how those ideas appear directly or indirectly almost 150 years later in Church’s 1859 masterpiece, The Heart of the Andes (1859, oil on canvas). Specifically I will seek to answer Addison’s dilemma regarding the interdependence between the artist and nature itself—how the artist may be reconciled to the raw power of nature far greater than anything a human could hope to create. I will study this question in relation to Church’s work, using Addison as a critical guide.
Addison begins his study of the experience of art with an enumeration of the various powers that great art has over the human emotions. He holds up art as an entity with powers over the human mind equal to philosophical law, “a beautiful prospect delights the soul, as much as a demonstration; and a description in Homer has charmed more readers than a chapter in Aristotle.”2 Yet Addison also acknowledges the inexplicable method by which art operates over the human soul. On the visceral nature of experiencing art he writes, “We are struck, we know not how, with the symmetry of any thing we see, and immediately assent to the beauty of an object, without enquiring into the particular causes and occasions of it.”3 On an emotional level, the grandeur of Church’s The Heart of the Andes certainly strikes one immediately and inexplicably. Standing at almost six feet by ten feet, the work’s sheer massiveness awes the viewer into a kind of physical and mental submission. But apart from the measurable dimensions of the canvas, the breathtaking depiction of nature itself causes the viewer to “immediately assent to the Beauty of the Object.”4 With his description of immediate and visceral awe, Addison arrives directly at the profound conclusion that “beauty” operates by hidden and unknowable machinery to affect us, “we know not how.” Viewing The Heart of the Andes does not necessitate prior art historical knowledge or critical theories. Each viewer will experience the artwork in a similar manner to any other human. The difference between this viewer and one who has, for example, read the complete works of John Ruskin, is that the Ruskin reader will have an heightened intellectual context in which to place the work. Prior or additional knowledge may enhance the pleasure of the viewer, but the work’s success does not depend on the viewer having prior knowledge. The work must be able to stand unaided by the viewer’s previous studies.
Upon concluding his introduction to the topic and preliminary observations, Addison moves directly into his prototypical articulation of the sublime. He writes on the pleasure of beholding objects that inspire terror or disgust without losing their power to please:
There may, indeed, be something so terrible or offensive, that the horror or loathsomeness of an object may over-bear the pleasure which results from its greatness, novelty, or beauty; but still there will be such a mixture of delight in the very disgust it gives us, as any of these three qualifications are most conspicuous and prevailing. . . . Such are the prospects of huge heaps of mountains, high rocks and precipices where we are not struck with the novelty or beauty of the sight, but with that rude kind of magnificence which appears in many of these stupendous works of nature.5
The “horror or loathsomeness” of Church’s work is in its power to dwarf one’s sense of self-worth. The immensity of the central mountains and the forbidding height of the snowcapped peak in the left background render the human subjects in the middle foreground almost invisible. The power of Church’s mountains proceeds not from “novelty” but from the “rude kind of magnificence” with which the mountains dominate the viewer’s psyche. Further, Church’s realistic portrayal of the mountains—informed by his firsthand experience with the mountains of South America—heightens the scene’s magnificence by convincing the audience that such a spectacular view might truly exist in nature. The scene is not melodramatically or emotionally overwrought in such a way as to detract from the work’s realism. Somehow Church has contrived to make an impossibly grand scene appear natural and possible—if he had strayed into the melodramatic the work would have lost some of its emotional power to awe. If we see the snowcapped peak in the background of the painting and determine that it looks overly enlarged, impossibly high, or otherwise unrealistic, then we cease to feel the fear that a depiction of real mountains can bring.
In his writings on pleasurable fear, specifically that which results from observing distant mountain peaks, Addison seems to speak from some personal, direct experience:
When we look on such hideous objects, we are not a little pleased to think we are in no danger of them. We consider them at the same time, as dreadful and harmless; so that the more frightful appearance they make, the greater is the pleasure we receive from the sense of our own safety. . . . It is for the same reason that we are delighted with the reflecting upon dangers that are past, or in looking on a precipice at a distance, which would fill us with a different kind of horror, if we saw it hanging over our heads.6
Addison finds that a steep and icy “precipice” will give an observer pleasure mainly by affirming her own safety in standing at a distance on stable ground. One wonders whether Addison ever climbed a mountain, and if he experienced the “different kind of horror” he describes that imminent danger can bring. In Church’s painting, however, the mountains remain safely and comfortingly at a distance. But the snowcapped peak in the top left of the background still broods forbiddingly over the entire scene. The pure white of the summit snow, and the gentle blue backdrop of the skies, both draw the eye away from the contrastingly dark greens and browns of the rest of the scenery. Thus in contrasting light and dark, Church uses the snow covered mountain as a visual relief from the earthy color palette that dominates the rest of the landscape—especially the dark brown mountains that take up most of the center of the painting. Yet in seeking visual relief from the darker tones, we are forced to focus our attention on the “frightful appearance” of the snowy peak that would certainly “fill us with a different kind of horror, if we saw it hanging over our heads.” We receive visual relief but we simultaneously must feel the pleasurable chill from fear of the distant mountain. But in Addison’s estimation there is yet one more reason that we feel pleasure upon observing the awful and massive mountains of Church’s painting:
Our imagination loves to be filled with an object, or to grasp at any thing that is too big for its capacity. We are flung into a pleasing astonishment at such unbounded views, and feel a delightful stillness and amazement in the soul at the apprehension[s] of them. Such wide and undetermined prospects are as pleasing to the fancy, as the speculations of eternity or infinitude are to the understanding.7
Certainly in Church’s painting the mountains dominate the view and the imagination. Indeed, Church depicts the mountains as extending out to the left and right much farther past the edges of the painting, which gives the viewer a sense of “wide and undetermined prospects,” continuing to create an unknown vastness. It is this sense of incomprehensible size that Addison describes—the emotions that accompany one who observes something infinite in comparison to oneself. Fascinatingly, Addison describes the apprehension of such objects that are “too big for its [the Imagination’s] capacity” as a feeling of “delightful stillness and amazement” rather than one of consternation and fear. Further, Addison describes the feeling as emanating from the “soul” rather than from the body. We infer, then, that the fear Addison described earlier resulted from fear of bodily harm rather than from some fear for the spirit. The feeling of calm in the face of “eternity” that Addison experiences has some echoes in Mark Twain (1835–1910) over 150 years later, though we cannot know whether Twain had Addison in mind. Still, one finds an interesting similarity in the two great writers’ emotional responses to objects “too big for the imagination’s capacity.” Twain writes in A Tramp Abroad:
One had the sense of being under the brooding contemplation of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice—a spirit which had looked down, through the slow drift of the ages, upon a million vanished races of men, and judged them; and would judge a million more—and still be there, watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life should be gone and the earth have become a vacant desolation.8
The “unchanged and unchangeable” durability of the mountains seems to be some comfort to Twain, as they are objects to which one can anchor the psyche. Addison seems to be writing of a similar sentiment when he describes pleasure resulting from “the speculations of eternity or infinitude” that often accompany one’s observation of incomprehensibly massive objects.
In his next essay Addison expands his idea of the sublime and adds to it a religious feeling of awe at God’s power.
Our admiration, which is a very pleasing motion of the mind, immediately rises at the consideration of any object that takes up a great deal of room in the fancy, and by consequence, will improve into the highest pitch of astonishment and devotion when we contemplate his nature, that is neither circumscribed by time nor place, nor to be comprehended by the largest capacity of a created being.9
The sublime, for Addison, directly results in reverence for God. When one beholds the beauty and power of creation at work in nature, one cannot but feel the hand of one who “is neither circumscribed by Time nor Place.” In Addison’s understanding of art, God is the source of one’s feelings of pure astonishment when one sees an incomprehensibly massive mountain peak. Twain has a similar religious reverence—though he does not explicitly name God—in his sensation of being judged by an “unchanged and unchangeable” being. In Church’s painting, the cross is the one object that stands out—without any need for massiveness or other physical prominence. Church depicts a cross inconsequentially small in comparison with the backdrop of the mountains. Yet due to its bright, almost glowing white color, and its placement directly in front of more darkly hued foliage, the cross stands out as one of the painting’s most prominent objects. The saturated red and blue colors of the clothing that the tiny human subjects wear further draw the eye to the cross. One may posit many interpretations of the small cross standing before the mountains. From the perspective of Addison, one might argue that because of the infinite and incomprehensible being of God, any representation—from a tiny cross to a huge mountain—would have no ability to communicate God’s amazing nature. Thus we find the argument for a conceptual substitution in Church’s work. Perhaps Church means to have the mountains themselves testify to God’s awesome power. The cross is merely a human representation of religious sentiment, and so—because it proceeds from devout human hands—it has no pretensions of approximating the figure and power of God. Rather, Church lets God show himself through his own creations—the awe-inspiring mountains.
Addison develops his argument to discuss human inability to produce anything even approximating the power and beauty of nature itself. Addison writes:
If we consider the works of nature and art, as they are qualified to entertain the imagination, we shall find the last very defective, in comparison of the former; for though they may sometimes appear as beautiful or strange, they can have nothing in them of that vastness and immensity, which afford so great an entertainment to the mind of the beholder. The one may be as polite and delicate as the other, but can never shew herself so august and magnificent in the design.10
Seeing a painting of the Matterhorn can never compare to the experience of seeing the Matterhorn itself. Regardless of the “polite and delicate” heights that the artist achieves, a painting will never show the Matterhorn “herself so august and magnificent in design” as would be found by direct observation. Addison above argues that by the very feebleness of human artistic media, nothing produced with them can ever hope to compare to the “vastness and immensity” of Nature’s works. But Addison then backtracks to make the unexpected claim that:
But though there are several of these wild scenes, that are more delightful than any artificial shows; yet we find the works of nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art. . . . And if the products of nature rise in value, according as they more or less resemble those of art, we may be sure that artificial works receive a greater advantage from their resemblance of such as are natural; because here the similitude is not only pleasant, but the pattern more perfect.11
While Addison admits that “there is something more bold and masterly in the rough careless strokes of nature, than in the nice touches and embellishments of art,” he also believes that nature somehow gains by appearing similar to preexisting artwork. That is, Addison finds natural scenes in the real world to be more beautiful the more they appear to have been laid out and planned by a masterful artist as they might have been in a painting:
Hence it is that we take delight in a prospect which is well laid out, and diversified with fields and meadows, woods and rivers; in those accidental landscapes of trees, clouds and cities, that are sometimes found in the veins of marble; in the curious fret-work of rocks and grottos; and, in a word, in any thing that hath such a variety or regularity as may seem the effect of design, in what we call the works of chance.12
The human eye, according to Addison, is well pleased by the “effect of design” that does not simply scatter beautiful objects at random but that places them purposefully and with some sense of reason. But the “effect of design” cannot come on so strongly that it destroys the “bold and masterly in the rough careless strokes of nature,” for then the powerful quality that nature has over artificial works is lost. Essentially, Addison argues that the natural scene must have a logical beauty that structures it, but that logic cannot become the only guiding principle of the structure—some natural disorder is necessary for maximum pleasure in viewing the work. Thus when first viewing Church’s painting we find a sense of order and unification that belies closer inspection of the various chaotic elements such as jungle underbrush and tangled roots in the foreground.
When The Heart of the Andes is viewed as a whole, the “effect of design” appears strongly, from the perfectly placed snowcapped mountain to its tonal contrast with the massive brown of the adjacent Andes, to the trees that highlight and frame—but do not obstruct—the mountain view. Yet when one looks closer, one finds Church has masterfully exhibited the “rough and careless strokes of nature” so as to have that effect equally prominent in the piece. The exposed roots of the tree on the right lean precariously over the water, and one expects the entire section of earth and tree will topple in at any moment. The detail of the mountains, while exquisitely wrought, has only the guiding sense of a natural tectonic formation—Church’s hand as an artist in ordering the mountains is completely invisible.
Finally, Addison gives a description of the power an artist possesses over nature. As the artist can pick and choose various objects from various scenes, and can combine these objects in the most pleasing possible way, therefore the artist has the capability of outdoing the random scattering one finds in nature. Addison writes:
The reader [viewer] finds a scene drawn in stronger colours, and painted more to the life in his imagination . . . than by an actual survey of the scene which they describe. In this case the poet [painter] seems to get the better of nature; he takes, indeed, the landscape after her, but gives it more vigorous touches, heightens its beauty, and so enlivens the whole piece, that the images which flow from the objects themselves appear weak and faint, in comparison of those that come from the expressions.13
One would not find the exact scene depicted by Church anywhere in South America or in the world. Rather, one realizes that Church culled from the various perfections of nature, and combined each he found with purpose in a single work. Indeed, Church “seems to get the better of nature” in that the picture he creates is possibly more breathtaking than any one would come across in real life. Church depicts a perfect balance of colors, from the rich reddish browns of the Andes starkly contrasted with the pure white snow-covered peak, to the perfect blue sky, to the greens and golds of the South American jungle. In nature one might not ever find two mountains so perfectly in harmony through color, proportion, and positioning. Further, the framing trees and their green hues match perfectly with both mountains’ colorings. To top everything, the clouds in Church’s depiction are cooperative beyond measure, obligingly exposing the blue sky where it is needed behind the white of the snowy mountain, while obscuring the sky with a fine grey where blue would clash with the Andes’ brown. As if to underscore this point, Addison concludes his study of the pleasures of sight and the imagination with the reflection:
It is the part of a poet [painter] to humour the imagination in its own notions, by mending and perfecting nature where he describes a reality, and by adding greater beauties than are put together in nature, where he describes a fiction.14
He leaves open the question of whether the artist or nature itself has the upper hand in producing better works for the appreciation of humanity. While nature has the raw power to awe and astonish with its enormity and grandeur, the artist can correct any mistakes or blemishes that occur by chance in nature’s production. Ultimately one finds that the two are mutually dependent. Church could not have been inspired to paint The Heart of the Andes without actually witnessing the Andes’ power and majesty. The Andes, meanwhile, have rarely before or since had their best qualities represented to such great advantage for human appreciation. In Church’s masterwork, then, we find a harmonious interdependence between artist and subject that works, as Addison says, to the benefit of both.
1. Joseph Addison, The Spectator, with sketches of the Lives of the Authors and Explanatory Notes, in Eight Volumes (London: William Allason, J. Maynard and W. Blair, 1819) Vol. 2., No. 411, 65.
2. Ibid., 67.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Spectator, No. 412, 69.
6. Spectator No. 418, 103.
7. Spectator No. 412, 69.
8. Mark Twain, The Complete Works of Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, (Harper, 1907), vol. 2; 41.
9. Spectator No. 413, 75.
10. Spectator No. 414, 79.
11. Spectator No. 414, 80.
12. Spectator No. 414, 80.
13. Spectator No. 416, 93.
14. Spectator No. 418, 104.
Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900)
The Heart of The Andes, 1859
oil on canvas, 66 1/8 x 119 1/4in. (168 x 302.9cm)
Metropolitan Museum Of Art