Church, Frederick Edwin (1826-1900) , American painter, born in Hartford, Connecticut. He studied painting with Thomas Cole and became a member of the Hudson River School, which specialized in romantic landscapes of the Hudson River valley. Although he painted scenes of this type—notably Niagara Falls (1857, Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.) and Catskill Mountains (1852, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota)—Church preferred landscapes of scenes in South America, Europe, and Palestine. He produced such works as The Aegean Sea (1871) and Heart of the Andes (1859), both in the Metropolitan Museum, New York City.