FREDERICK S. CHURCH (1842-1924) American artist, working mainly as an illustrator and especially known for his (often allegorical) depiction of animals. He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His father was an important figure in politics as well as a well-known lawyer. At the age of 13 he left school and took a job at the then newly-established American Express Company in Chicago, with his parents intending him to have a business career. Being nineteen at the outbreak of the Civil War he served in the Union Army. After his discharge he returned to Chicago, having decided to devote his life to art, and started studying drawing under Walter Shirlaw at the city\'s Academy of Design. In 1870 he decided to continue his studies in New York City, which became his home for the rest of his life. He enrolled at the National Academy of Design, where he was taught by Lemuel Wilmarth. He joined the Art Students League, headed by his old teacher Walter Shirlaw, in which he remained involved for the rest of his life. By the middle of the 1870s he was already gaining a name as a gifted illustrator. Among the many magazines and periodicals which eventually took up his works were the various Harper\'s publications (Harper\'s Bazaar, Harper\'s Weekly, and Harper\'s Young People), as well as Frank Leslie\'s Weekly, Century Magazine and the Ladies\' Home Journal. His career was helped along by several devoted patrons, among them William T. Evans, John Gellatly, the banker Grant B. Schley, and the railroad-car manufacturer Charles Lang Freer, the founder of Washington, D.C.\'s Freer Gallery. His work on the Fables of Aesop , including an illustration of the human and animal protagonists of each fable plus an elaborate cover for the whole, is considered among the best of his works. Some of Church\'s works are kept in the Permanent Collection of the Fulton Decorative Arts Gallery at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, Maryland. Others are at the collection of Dale and Rosie Horst of Newton, Kansas, which lent them to the Fulton Gallery in 2003, for an extensive exhibition including both Church\'s original drawings and the magazines and periodicals in which they appeared. Original etching, \"The Wanderer\'s Return\", plate signed and dated NY 1887. Plate size is 12 x 8-1/4\", image is 10-1/2 x 6-3/4\" plus good wide margins.

Image area is fine; margin areas show only wear too minor to mention.