Artist F. S. Church

 

F. S. Church (Frederick Stuart Church) studied at the National Academy of Art in New York after his discharge from the Civil War, then continued his studies at the Art Students’ League. His illustrations were widely published in the 1870s and 1880s.

In 1885, he illustrated Fables by G. Washington Aesop and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Wonder Book For Boys and Girls.

“Whatever I do must be from life,” F. S. Church told a reporter for The Tampa Tribune. “Sentiment is what I’m after. I’ll never be a mere technician or do any kind of specialized brushwork like the modern artists, who run more to paint than to thought.”

Church explained that his pictures told stories people could understand, but the reporter wasn’t so sure that was it. Rather, the artist used his imagination to “create delicately fanciful or poetically humorous pictures.” For example, Flapjacks, published in Harper’s Weekly in December 1892, depicted a pretty girl in the woods cooking pancakes for a group of bears. Another illustration, Cold Sauce With Christmas Pudding, shows a young woman making dessert for a bear and a group of rabbits.

Money didn’t motivate him. Church said he didn’t sell his works at high prices when he started. Instead, he aimed his illustrations at people of moderate means who would enjoy them in their homes.

However, critics didn’t always take Church seriously because he did a lot of fanciful work with animals and shapes. In 1891, The Sioux City Journal described him as a figure painter who excelled “in the creation of oddities—such as the figure of a floating woman sitting on a new moon and floating through the clouds.”

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