LEARN: The Collections
Visitors touring beautiful Olana will see the paintings, sculpture and furnishings Frederic and Isabel Church acquired over the course of their lives, which surrounded them and their children, servants and guests in their daily life at Olana. The collection was described by a 19th century guest as, "a museum of fine arts rich in bronzes, paintings, sculptures and antique and artistic specimens from all over the world."
Today's visitor experience is remarkably unchanged, with the public encountering interiors that look as they did in the 1890s-- the virtually intact home of one of America's most important painters. The sheer richness and depth of the collections speak to Church's life-long interest in acquiring intriguing objects from around the world.The whole is an exemplary example of an early Aesthetic Movement interior.
Highlights of the collection include paintings by Frederic Church and fellow Hudson River School artists Martin Johnson Heade and Arthur Parton, and numerous works by his close friend sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer.
The eclectic assortment of furniture and art collected on his many travels abroad and purchased
from the growing number of purveyors in New York City include, Middle Eastern carpets,
metalwork,ceramics and costumes; old master paintings; Mexican and colonial folk art; pre-Columbian art; and 19th century American and Oriental furniture.
Object of The Month: Framed Butterfly Specimen
Mounted and Framed Butterfly from Colombia on display in the Court Hall (OL.1981.687)
In the doldrums of a northeastern winter, this delicate butterfly specimen evokes the exotic beauties of the South American climes of its origins. It hangs over one of the corner bookcases in the Court Hall of the main house, and historic photographs from the 1880s show that it hung in this room for many years. The back of its frame has an inscription in Church's own hand: "Butterfly from the Emerald mines of Muzo near Bogota New (G)ranada."New Granada is now modern-day Colombia. The butterfly was apparently brought back by Church from one of his trips to South America in the 1850s.
Earlier in Church's career, the butterfly graced the walls of the artist's New York City studio in the 10th Street Studio Building, where it drew the attention of visitors and press whose observations are recorded in contemporary accounts. Art biographer Henry Tuckerman wrote that Church used the specimen as a means of proving that the intense colors he used in his tropical paintings were true to life. The author recounted: "A butterfly impaled under a glass in his studio actually scintillates azure; and when visitors question the authenticity of his brilliant tropical hues, he points them to this insect witness of nature's radiant tones in those latitudes."
The distinctive octagonal frame of the mounted butterfly can be seen on the northwest pilaster in this October 11, 1884 photograph of the Court Hall and stair hall taken by Emily and Robert de Forest on a visit to Olana. (OL.1986.378.28.A, Olana Archives)
At some point Church moved the butterfly up to Olana from the New York. Clearly a favored memento of his adventures of younger days, Church made sure this fragile object not only survived but that it was featured among the myriad fantastic objects on display in the Court Hall. Look out for the distinctive iridescent and reflective blue of this butterfly's glass-like wings the next time you visit the house!
