Jasper Francis Cropsey
Jasper Francis Cropsey
1823 - 1900
American painter and architect. Cropsey was a practising architect by 1843, but in that year he also exhibited a landscape painting, to favourable reviews, at the National Academy of Design, in New York. He greatly admired THOMAS COLE for his dramatic use of the American landscape, but Cropsey brought to his panoramic vistas a more precise recording of nature, as in View of Greenwood Lake, New Jersey (1845; San Francisco, CA, de Young Mem. Mus.). Such vastness and detail impressed the viewer with both the grandeur and the infinite complexity of nature and indicated a universal order. In 1847 Cropsey made his first trip to Europe, settling in Rome among a circle of American and European painters. His eye for detail in recording nature was encouraged by the Nazarenes, and his American sympathy for historical and literary subjects was sharpened by the antiquities of Italy. In 1848 Cropsey was in Naples, where the work of contemporary painters may have inspired the bold massing, deep space and brilliant lighting in View of the Isle of Capri (1848; New York, NY, Alexander Gal.)
After his return to America in 1848, Cropsey painted landscape subjects, including a keenly observed view of a serene and sun-drenched harvest scene, Bareford Mountains, West Milford, New Jersey (1850; New York, Brooklyn Mus. A.), and a dramatic thunderstorm and waterfall in Storm in the Wilderness (1851; Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.). He also painted canvases after sketches made in Europe, one of the largest being The Coast of Genoa (1854; Washington, DC, N. Mus. Amer. A.). The strain of idealism characteristic of America found expression in such allegories as Spirit of War (1851; Washington, DC, N.G.A.).
Cropsey spent 1856 to 1863 in England, painting American and Italian subjects as well as the English landscape. He provided 16 scenes of America for lithography by Gambart & Co., drew the rugged coast at Lulworth, Dorset, and captured the charm of the Isle of Wight in Beach at Bonchurch (1859; Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, Newington Cropsey Found.). The detailed clarity and intense colour of the Pre-Raphaelites impressed Cropsey, and his inclination towards truth to nature was encouraged by his personal acquaintance with JOHN RUSKIN. Cropsey portrayed, for an enthusiastic English public, the blazing colours of New England autumn in the vast painting called Autumn—On the Hudson River (1860; Washington, DC, N.G.A.). Returning to America in 1863, Cropsey repeated his success with such large, crisply drawn and vigorously painted scenes of America as Indian Summer (1866; Detroit, MI, Inst. A.). Many of his paintings were modest in size, peopled with boaters or fishermen, sharp in detail but with a serene, burnished, atmosphere, as in Autumn Greenwood Lake (1866; Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, Newington Cropsey Found.). During the 1860s and 1870s Cropsey became increasingly concerned with depicting the appearance of landscape strongly modified by sun and atmosphere (e.g. The Valley of Wyoming). Air and light became chief elements in his Luminist pictures, such as Lake Wawayanda (1874; Amherst Coll., MA, Mead A. Mus.).
Cropsey revived his architectural practice soon after 1863 and built his own house, Aladdin, Warwick, NY (completed by 1869), in a GOTHIC REVIVAL style. His scheme (1867) for a five-storey apartment house was one of the first in America without shops on the ground floor. He also designed the 14 stations of New York’s Sixth Avenue Elevated Railway (1876; destr. 1939), with much curving ironwork.
In later years Cropsey turned increasingly to watercolour, often with highlights in white gouache and solidly painted darks. An inclination towards the dramatic and imaginative rather than the calm and lyrical is evident in such watercolours as Under the Palisades (c. 1891; San Francisco, CA, de Young Mem. Mus.). Despite the growing Tonalist concern for projection of individual temperament and the Impressionist preoccupation with perception of light in the second half of the 19th century, Cropsey’s descriptive clarity, spirited handling of paint and expansive vistas brought great vigour to American painting. [William S. Talbot. "Cropsey, Jasper F.." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T020378.]
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