Sky at sunset, Jamaica, West Indies 1865

Frederic Edwin Church made this oil sketch of a Jamaican sunset. The quick, gestural brushstrokes used to create this study are typical of the plein air approach, which became popular in the 19th century. Artists sought to capture the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere by working directly in the landscape. The materiality of oil paint, with its capacity for blending and layering, was perfect for this. Church was part of the Hudson River School, a group of landscape painters who celebrated the American wilderness, but also traveled extensively. As with many artists, he was drawn to places outside of the West, including the Caribbean. But these were colonial contexts. The intense labor required to extract natural resources from places like Jamaica – think of the sugar plantations – was something that Church surely would have witnessed, if not directly represented in his art. Materials, making, and context are all important when we look at works like this, which might seem at first to be simply beautiful.