Jun 292026
The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL
Hanging in Scotland’s national art collection is the only major work by Frederic Edwin Church in any European public collection: Niagara Falls, from the American Side (1867). Church was the leading painter of the Hudson River School and this vast canvas was commissioned by a New York art dealer, intended to represent America at the Universal Exhibition in Paris.
John Stewart Kennedy, who was born in Scotland but made his fortune in New York coal, steel, and banking, purchased the painting in 1887 with the apparent express purpose of gifting it to his native country. The painting hung unseen for almost a century before being restored to view in 1980.