Cotopaxi — Frederic Edwin Church, 1855

Church first traveled through Colombia and Ecuador in 1853, making sketches and detailed notes of the country he encountered. Two years later, those observations becameCotopaxi. The snow-covered volcano rises beyond tropical vegetation, a waterfall, and still water, with a faint trace of smoke above its summit.

This is Church’s 1855 painting, now held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.