Template:POTD/2014-12-09
Aurora Borealis is an oil painting on canvas completed by Frederic Edwin Church in 1865 and now held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It depicts the northern lights and the Arctic expedition of Dr. Isaac Hayes – a pupil of Church's – and first exhibited in 1865. The painting has been considered to depict the portent of a simultaneously triumphant and desolate Union victory, and been associated with Church's Rainy Season in the Tropics (1866).Painting: Frederic Edwin Church