A member of the Hudson River School, Jasper Francis Cropsey was a painter of nature and a well-known artist of his time.

Jasper Cropsey’s Early Days

Jasper Cropsey was born the son of a farmer in 1823 and he grew up on Staten Island, New York. He always loved to paint. He trained as an architect under Joseph Trent, who encouraged his interest in drawing and painting. Though he started his career as an architect, however, he was painting whenever he found free time. Cropsey soon developed a keen interest in landscape. His fascination for painting was so strong that he painted with as much enthusiasm as he followed his profession as an architect.

Influence of Hudson River School

In the 1840s Hudson River School landscape painting was at the height of popularity. He was influenced by the paintings of the greats lie Thoms Cole and others. However, Cropsey painted autumn landscapes more beautifully than anybody else. He soon became so successful that he started being ranked among the American greats like Thomas Cole and Frederick Edwin Church. The number of his paintings with ‘Autumn’ as their title is more than 50. The number will be far bigger if one were to include his paintings on ‘autumn’ as a subject and have different names.

Beauty of His Own Land

In 1847, Cropsey travelled Europe extensively and painted some landscapes. He settled in Thomas Cole’s old studio in Rome. But he always set his eyes on the landscapes in the Northeastern United States. He returned to New York in 1849 and travelled upstate to devote himself to landscape painting. This would eventually bring him prominence as a Hudson River School painter. Cropsey also took interest in the landscapes in his home states of New York and New Jersey. Some of the landmarks that featured repeatedly in his paintings are the Susquehanna Hudson and Delaware Rivers. His wife, Maria, hailed from the Greenwood Lake area on the New York-New Jersey border and the couple lived in that area after their marriage. This also explains when the areas surrounding Greenwood Late were one of Cropsey’s favourite subjects for painting.

Painter of Autumn

One of the highlights of Cropseys’s paintings is that he uses intense yellows, oranges and reds in his autumn landscapes. He is known for his ability to capture the beauty of landscapes in autumnal exuberance using these intense colours. Despite being an architect, his paintings rarely feature buildings in his compositions. Excepting a few cases of human figures shown in some cases, he almost always populated his paintings with forests, trees, water, rivers and animals. His famous painting ‘Autumn on the Hudson River’ which queen Victoria viewed in person and appreciated abundantly, confirmed Cropsey as the painter of autumns.

Queen Victoria Expressed Disbelief

Experts say that Cropsey painted ‘Autumn on the Hudson River’ during his extended stay in London in 1860. He wanted the English to see and experience the beauty of the American landscape. With the intent to catch the attention of English art lovers, Cropsey held a solo exhibition. Thereafter, his wife and he showed the painting to Queen Victoria in person. Legend has it that the Queen expressed disbelief about the intensity of the colors in the painting. Experts say that the Queen suspected that Cropsey had exaggerated the vibrancy of the foliage in his native land. Thereafter, Cropsey, supposedly, had real autumn leaves sent over from America to prove the point of reality. This canvas was shown at the London International Exhibition of 1862 and the painting became so famous that it established the painter as ‘America’s painter of autumn’.

His Painting ‘Greenwood Lake‘

‘Lake Greenwood ‘ was one of Crospsey’s well-known landscape paintings. It was one of the most recurring motifs in his works. According to the painter himself, ‘it was here that he first started to paint, inspired by the magnificence of his landscape and his paintings transmit this sense of the splendour of nature in its virgin state. This painting reveals Cropsey’s interest during his mature phase in the effects of light and atmosphere on the landscape. The scene is viewed from an elevated point and the view is framed by trees in the foreground. The leaves of the trees are changing colour with the onset of autumn. Mountains in the background are depicted in warm and glowing tones.

‘Ruins at Narny, Italy‘

Cropsey lived in Italy during the two year period between 1847 and 1849. During his stay, he visited the hill town on Narni, north of Rome, and painted this picture there. The painting was exhibited at the Centennial International Exhibition in 1876. This painting attracted the attention of the art world as, like so many other Crospy’s paintings, this one also reflected the passive influence of some of the older Hudson School Painters, like Thomas Cole. Coincidentally, it was during this period of Crospey’s stay in Italy, he learned about the untimely death of Thomas Cole.

Cropsey’s Famous artworks’

Some of Cropsey’s famous artworks include, ‘In the Clove’, ‘Autumn on Greenwood Lake’, ‘Greenwood Lake’, ‘Rural Landscape’, ‘High Torne Mountain, Rockland Country’, ‘By the Sea, Lulworth’, ‘Landscape’, ‘Pioneer’s Home, Eagle Cliffe’, ‘White Mountains’, ‘Niagara Falls from the Foot of Goat Island’, ‘Ruins at Narni, Italy’, ‘View near Sherburne, Chenango County, New York’,