Our Banner in the Sky

Although a hand-sized composition, Frederic Edwin Church's Our Banner in the Sky evokes a sense of grandeur, depicting a national symbol, the American flag, through imposing atmospheric elements of nature. With the sun hidden behind a distant mountain, early morning light fills the ethereal sky with patriotic hues. Backlit striated clouds take on a reddish-amber glow, parting to reveal a field of blue, dotted by stars. Together, the illuminated sky, clouds, and stars become a celestial banner, seemingly held aloft by the barren tree at left. A soaring eagle serves as a mast-top to the natural flagpole, enriching the transient scene with yet another symbol of the American nation.

At the time Church painted his emblematic landscape, the Stars and Stripes was a contested national symbol. He created Our Banner in the Sky at the outbreak of the Civil War, in the weeks following the Confederate attack at Fort Sumter in April 1861. The incident prompted the remaining Southern states to secede from the Union and led to the U.S. declaration of war. The American flag figured prominently in the defeat, as it was shot at during the bombardment and eventually lowered by Union troops as part of their surrender to rebel forces. Such injury to the Union banner incited patriotic fervor among Northerners, including Church. Using short, staccato brushstrokes of red, the artist alluded to the tattered edges of a war-torn banner. Further, Church cast the Northern cause in divine and moral terms, employing a heavenly light of dawn to suggest that the bloody trials of war were guided by a higher purpose. It was common artistic practice among nineteenth-century landscape painters to infuse nature with ideas of nation and divine providence. Commemorating a specific catalytic event, Church transformed such abstract ideas into a clear political statement with an emotional appeal that strongly resonated with wartime viewers in the North.

In June 1861, the publishing firm of Goupil & Co. paid Church $200 to produce a chromolithograph of the painting. With "flag-mania"—as one contemporary journalist put it—then sweeping across the North, the print elicited much enthusiasm, as middle-class audiences could afford their own, colorful copies of Church's rallying image. Some viewers wrote poems about the work, dedicated to the artist. Others sought to capitalize on the image's popularity by producing unauthorized imitations of Our Banner in the Sky, which circulated alongside the official Goupil print.

Identification of Church's "original" oil sketch for Our Banner in the Sky remains problematical. There are several versions of the work, including an oil on paper mounted on cardboard (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), an oil on paper (private collection), and an oil on canvas (private collection). Complicating the issue, recent examinations by conservators have revealed lithographic or chromolithographic prints beneath the oil surface of at least two other versions: one in the collection of the Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, New York, and this work, a black-and-white lithograph retouched with oil paint. While neither of these two, therefore, can be the original sketch, scholars believe them to have been retouched by Church himself. Why the artist would paint over his own lithograph Our Banner in the Sky is a question that continues to interest art historians.

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Through American Eyes: Frederic Church and the Landscape Oil Sketch," National Gallery, London, United Kingdom and Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venues: National Gallery, London, United Kingdom, February 6–April 23, 2013; Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, May 11–September 8, 2013. [exh. cat.]

Home Front: Daily Life in the Civil War North, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois and The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, September 26, 2013–March 24, 2014. [exh. cat]

  Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Art Institute of Chicago and Terra Foundation for American Art (organizers). Venue:  Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China, September 28, 2018–January 6, 2019.   [exh. cat.]

Terra Collection-in-Residence, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 29, 2022–December 31, 2026.

   

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