North Carolina Mountains

William Frerichs was born in Belgium and grew up in The Hague, Netherlands. After his education at the National Academy in New York, he accepted a teaching position in Greensboro, North Carolina. The South was, however, in the midst of the Civil War, so he was swiftly conscripted into the Confederate forces and supposedly captured by Union forces three times.

Once the war was over, he moved back to New York with his family, where he would live for the rest of his life. Strangely, more than half of his paintings are based on Southern material. One series depicts the idyllic “Tamahaka,” a fictional amalgamation of Frerichs’s memories of North Carolina waterfalls and mountains. His fusion of Dutch Romantic and Hudson River School styles can be seen in his glowing, sublime landscapes. Despite his experiences in the Civil War, Frerichs chose to preserve the natural beauty of the landscape over any of the historical tumult.