Below the Surface: What Scientific Imaging Reveals about Church’s Artistic Process by Maura Lyons

May 18, 2021

While Frederic Church won acclaim during his lifetime for his skills as a painter, a focus solely on Church’s paintings ignores his technical experimentation in multiple media, including drawing and printmaking. In this virtual webinar, Maura Lyons (Drake University) will focus on two Civil War-era works, Our Banner in the Sky and Our Flag, to examine Church’s working process more closely. Lyons will highlight her research using scientific techniques to examine Our Flag while working at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). These techniques allow us to see below the surface layers of paint to detect the presence of other media. Such examinations reveal Church’s working process, which resulted in a flexible visual language that spoke to both the general public and wealthy patrons.