Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900). Schoodic Peninsula from Mount Desert at Sunrise, 1850–1855. Brush and oil paint on paperboard. Gift of Louis P. Church, 1917-4-332. Photo: Matt Flynn.

There are almost 3,000 objects by Frederic Edwin Church and over 300 works by Winslow Homer—the largest collection of works by these artists in the world—in Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s permanent collection. The holdings also contain over eighty drawings and watercolors by Thomas Moran.

The inclusion of these works in the collection is closely tied to the Museum's original mission. In 1897, Sarah Cooper Hewitt, Eleanor Garnier Hewitt, and Amelia Hewitt founded the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration (the forerunner of today’s Cooper-Hewitt) with the goal of educating future designers and enhancing the quality of American design. For their instructional value, the Museum solicited paintings, drawings, and prints from the Church and Homer families and from Moran himself. These works, which cover almost every period of the artists’ careers, are unusual in that most are studies rather than “finished” works of art. The Hewitt sisters believed this special character of the works would allow young designers to study the fresh approaches and processes of these contemporary artists and adapt them to the design trades.