Church settled in New York where he taught his first pupil, William James Stillman. From the spring to autumn each year Church would travel, often by foot, sketching. He returned each winter to paint and to sell his work.
In 1860 Church bought a farm in Hudson, New York and married Isabel Carnes. Both Church's first son and daughter died in March, 1863 of diphtheria, but he and his wife started a new family with the birth of Frederic junior in 1865.
When he and his wife had a family of four children, they began to travel together. In 1867 they visited Europe and the Middle East, allowing Church to return to painting larger works.
Before leaving on that trip, Church purchased the eighteen acres (73,000 m²) on the hilltop above his Hudson farm -- land he had long wanted because of its magnificent views of the Hudson River and the Catskills. In 1870 he began the construction of "Olana" on that site. This highly personal and eclectic castle incorporated many of the design ideas that he had acquired in the Middle East. Olana, now owned by the nonprofit Olana Partnership and administered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is a New York State historic site open to the public.
In 1860Church bought a farm in Hudson, New York and married Isabel Carnes.
Both Church's first son and daughter died in March, 1863 of diphtheria, but he and his wife started a new family with the birth of Frederic junior in 1865.
Church’s happiness was blasted in March of 1865, when his son and his daughter died of diphtheria, but with the birth of Frederic junior in 1866, Church and his wife began a new family that was eventually to number four children.
Church, however, began to devote his creative energies increasingly to gentleman farming and to the designing and redesigning of Olana, his hilltop fantasy of a "Persian" villa at Hudson, New York, a seemingly endless undertaking begun in 1869 in consultation with the architect Calvert Vaux.
Church's final artistic legacy was a multitude of breathtaking small oil sketch paintings, mostly of Olana or of the area around Millinocket Lake in Maine, where he bought a camp in 1880, or of Mexico, where Church began wintering in 1882.
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