Rainy Season in the Tropics

Rainy Season in the Tropics

Rainy Season in the Topics, 1866 -- oil on canvas

The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco

Like many artists of his time, Church travelled abroad to find inspiration and subject matter. Rainy Season in the Tropics is actually a representation of two different places -- the Ecuadorian Andes and the Island of Jamaica. This is important because when we look at the painting, we actually see two different scapes which, when we think about it, could not typically be part of nature.

The first part is the right bottom corner and depicts a tropical scene with palm trees, greenery, and what appear to be some travelers highlighted in light around the dark green of the forest. The second part is, of course, very craggy and tall mountains done in contrasting orange and browns. To tie the two together, Church uses a perfectly shaped rainbow, but without all the typical colorations -- just more of a glow and a bit of the prism of the rainbow effect on the upper and lower sides of the rainbow.

There really is not a focal point for the eye; one could say the travelers seem to be in a spotlight, but then the eye moves left to what could be a waterfall, which is the brightest part of the painting and the only part of the work in which the movement moves downward. The rest of the mountains move up, moving the eye to the rainbow glow. Then, on the upper right side of the painting is the only use of blue in the work -- a hint of blue sky emerging from the earth tones of the mountains and the rainbow glow -- possibly hinting at the emerging good weather after a storm.

In fact, there is not much color pallet used in this work -- there is the red jacket of the tiny traveler -- dwarfed likely on purpose by the tremendous height of the mountains, perhaps to show that humans are dwarfed by nature based on size and structure in the painting. The darkest spots in the painting are of the tropical forest, and they are also the least detailed. This was interesting because the mountains are almost photographic in their portrayal -- one can see the individual crags, peaks, and even rock shapes but the forest and the waterfall are just hinted at with swatches of color (green or white).

The overall impression of the painting is one of calmness and serenity -- we do not feel that nature is violent, foreboding, or even difficult. One could also say that the juxtaposition of the tropics and the mountains are part of the message because the only thing really tying the two together is the rainbow. And even though the rainbow touches both parts of the two biomes, the glow of the rainbow only hits the center of the painting, flowing downward from the sky and into the waterfall. We are not even really aware of the emerging blue sky unless we purposefully move our gaze upward. Perhaps, too, the abundance of vegetation in the tropics and the complete lack of vegetation in the mountain biome are meant to imply that nature is connected even through physically it would not appear so. Still, one must ask -- where is the light coming from the lights up the travelers in the right side. An argument could be made that that light is an extension of the right side of the rainbow, flowing down through the forest; but that light doesn't extend as far on the left side with the mountains.