Henry Church (American, 1836–1908)

b. 1836 — d. 1908

Henry Church is the best known self-trained artist to have worked in the Cleveland area. Son of a blacksmith and a teacher who moved from Massachusetts to Chagrin Falls in 1834, Church began work in his father’ s shop at age 13. He showed an early love of art, reputedly using charcoal from the shop to practice drawing. Moving to Parkman, Ohio, upon his marriage in 1859, Church returned to Chagrin Falls by 1861 and built a smithy. A pacifist, he bought his way out of military service in the Civil War. After his father’s death in November 1878, Church opened an art studio above his shop, dedicating himself to painting and, after 1885, to sculpture. Before 1885 he had only carved stone surreptitiously, apparently hoping that, upon discovery, his first monumental work (The Rape of the Indian Tribes by the White Man, also known as Squaw Rock, in what is now South Chagrin Reservation, Cleveland Metroparks) would be interpreted as a divine creation. Although it has been claimed that Church retired as a blacksmith at age 50 in 1886, according to the William’s Ohio State Directory, he was still practicing that trade in 1888–89. In 1888 he opened the short-lived Church’s Art Museum at Geauga Lake, Ohio, a popular picnic area; around the same time he rented out his blacksmith shop. Church’s productivity declined at the turn of the century as the physical strain of working stone taxed his health. An avid spiritualist, he read the periodical Banner Light. Taking advantage of early phonograph technology, he recorded his own funeral speech, an oration that concluded with the line “Good-bye at present.” "Transformations in Cleveland Art" (CMA, 1996), p. 225