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About Jasper Cropsey
Cropsey first exhibited at the National Academy of Design at the age of twenty. Already in 1847, a writer in Literary World declared that Cropsey "is one of the few among our landscape painters who go directly to nature for their materials. For one so young in his art, his attainments are extraordinary." Cropsey traveled through Europe (1847-49), mainly England and Italy. In 1856 he sold all the paintings he had done in order to travel to England. Queen Victoria herself praised his Autumn -- On the Hudson River and this insured his success. Six years later Cropsey was involved with the London Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations and later he exhibited two paintings at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1867. During the Civil War he painted a highly admired Battle of Gettysburg. He had studios in New York City in the 1870s. His painting Old Mill received an award at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition (1876). He lived at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York and gradually specialized in autumn landscapes. Cropsey was one of the founders of the American Water Color Society. Cropsey, the heir of Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand, promoted the concept of the idealized American landscape long after its popularity had waned.
Eastern Landscape or Cliffs in Autumn is one of the few late works. Also dated 1893 is his Winter Wonderland (MacMurray College, Jacksonville, Illinois). 1893 was in fact the year in which Cropsey suffered a severe stroke. For the Cropsey scholar Talbott (1970, p. 46), "his last works, mostly small and of familiar subjects, glow with a nostalgic serenity of a past age when a vista of American rivers, lakes and mountains was both a religious and national symbol."
LITERATURE:
Bermingham, Peter. Jasper F. Cropsey 1823-1900: A Retrospective View of America’s Painter of Autumn. Exh. cat. College Park, MD: University of Maryland Art Gallery, 1968.
Talbott, William S. Jasper F. Cropsey 1823-1900. Exh. cat. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1970.
Jasper F. Cropsey 1823-1900. [Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts series]. New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1977.
Maddox, Kenneth W. An Unprejudiced Eye: The Drawings of Jasper F. Cropsey. Exh. cat. Yonkers, NY: Hudson River Museum, 1980. |
Paintings by Jasper Cropsey
| Eastern Landscape or Cliffs in Autumn |
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Oil on canvas: 12½ x 18¼ in. |
| signed and dated 1893: lower right |
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