Jasper Francis Cropsey

Jasper Francis Cropsey (February 18, 1823 – June 22, 1900) was an American architect and artist. He is best known for his Hudson River School landscape paintings.

Early years

thumbnail|right|upright=1.5|Self-portrait in The Narrows from Staten Island(1868), detail

Cropsey was born on the farm of his father, Jacob Rezeau Cropsey, in Rossville on Staten Island, New York, the oldest of eight children. As a boy, Cropsey had recurring periods of poor health. While absent from school, Cropsey taught himself to draw. His early drawings included architectural sketches and landscapes drawn on notepads and in the margins of his schoolbooks.

Career

Cropsey trained as an architect under the tuition of Joseph Trench in the early 1840s, a period in which he was also trained in watercolor painting, instructed by Edward Maury, and took some life drawing courses at the National Academy of Design. He set up his own architecture office in 1843, but began exhibiting his watercolors at the National Academy of Design in 1844. A year later he was elected an associate member and turned exclusively to landscape painting; shortly after he was featured in an exhibition entitled "Italian Compositions".

Cropsey traveled in Europe from 1847 to 1849, visiting England, France, Switzerland, and Italy. He was elected a full member of the Academy in 1851. Cropsey was a personal friend of Henry Tappan, the president of the University of Michigan from 1852 to 1863. At Tappan's invitation, he traveled to Ann Arbor in 1855 and produced two paintings, one of the Detroit Observatory, and a landscape of the campus. He went abroad again in 1856, and resided seven years in London, sending his pictures to the Royal Academy and to the International exhibition of 1862.

thumb|upright=1.5|Starrucca Viaduct, Pennsylvania (1865)

Returning home, he opened a studio in New York and specialized in autumnal landscape paintings of the northeastern United States, often idealized and with vivid colors. Cropsey co-founded, with ten fellow artists, the American Society of Painters in Water Colors in 1866. He also made the architectural designs for the stations of the elevated railways in New York. the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Currier Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Works by Cropsey also hang in the White House.

Works

Some of Cropsey's works include Jedburgh Abbey; Pontaine Marshes (1847); Backwoods of America (1857);

File:The-spirit-of-war.jpg|The Spirit of War, 1851

File:Jasper Francis Cropsey - High Torne Mountain, Rockland County, New York.jpg|High Torne Mountain, Rockland County, New York, 1851

File:Jasper Francis Cropsey - The Coast of Genoa - Google Art Project.jpg|The Coast of Genoa, 1854

File:Jasper Francis Cropsey - Catskill Mountain House - Google Art Project.jpg|Catskill Mountain House, 1855

File:An Indian Summer Morning in the White Mountains.png|An Indian Summer Morning in the White Mountains, 1857

File:Cropsey, Jasper Francis - Summer, Lake Ontario - Google Art Project.jpg|Summer, Lake Ontario, 1857

File:Autumn--On the Hudson River-1860-Jasper Francis Cropsey.jpg|Autumn on the Hudson, 1860

File:Jasper Francis Cropsey - Autumn on Greenwood Lake - Google Art Project.jpg|Autumn on Greenwood Lake, 1861

File:Jasper Francis Cropsey The Narrows from Staten Island Amon Carter Museum.jpg|The Narrows from Staten Island, 1868

File:The Valley of Wyoming MET DT4598.jpg|The Valley of Wyoming, 1865, Metropolitan Museum of Art

File:JasperCropsey-Greenwood Lake 1875.jpg|Greenwood Lake, 1875, Smithsonian American Art Museum

File:Greenwood Lake by Jasper Francis Cropsey, 1879.jpg|Greenwood Lake, 1879

File:JasperCropseyUniversityOfMichigan.jpg|University of Michigan, Jasper Cropsey, 1855, University of Michigan Museum of Art

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Some of Cropsey's painting command high prices at auctions. Greenwood Lake (1879) sold at Christie's auction in 2012 for $422,500. Sunset, Camel's Hump, Lake Champlain (1877) sold for $314,500 in 2011.

Collection

Cropsey's home and studio, Ever Rest, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, has the largest permanent collection of Cropsey's work, collected by his great-granddaughter Barbara Newington. The collection has been on display since 1977 and the founding of the Newington-Cropsey Foundation.

Personal life

Cropsey married Maria Cooley in May 1847. He had met her during one of his visits to Greenwood Lake after 1843. Maria's father, Isaac P. Cooley, was a justice of the peace from 1837 to 1839 and became a judge over the New Jersey Court of Common Pleas in 1840. Cooley then became a member of New Jersey State House of Assembly from 1860 to 1861. Cooley offered to build Cropsey a studio on his estate but the offer was declined. In 1869 Cropsey built a 29-room Gothic Revival mansion and studio in Warwick, New York that he named Aladdin. As well as living in New York City, he spent part of his time in Warwick until the mansion was sold in 1884.

In 1884 Cropsey first rented then in 1885 bought a house at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York he named Ever Rest. He and Maria had two children: Mary Cortelyou Cropsey Howells (b. September. 5, 1850, d. July 30, 1921) and Lilly Frances Cropsey (b. July 16, 1859, d. February 21, 1889). Cropsey lived at Ever Rest until his death on June 22, 1900, and his wife Maria lived there until she died in 1906, having been married to "Frank" for 54 years.

Legacy and honors

The World War II Liberty Ship was named in his honor.

Monuments

File:Jasper Francis Cropsey Monument 2010.JPG|Headstone in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

File:NCF Ever Rest.jpg|Cropsey's home Ever Rest

File:NCF Gallery of Art.jpg|The Newington-Cropsey Foundation's Gallery of Art, a museum of Cropsey's works

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References

Notes

Sources

External links

Works at The Athenaeum
Newington Cropsey Foundation
White Mountain Paintings by Jasper Francis Cropsey
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Apple Blossoms by Jasper Cropsey
Alfred Brophy, Property and Progress: Antebellum Landscape Art and Property Law, McGeorge Law Review 40 (2008): 651
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Biography and Works
Reynolda House Museum of American Art
American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Cropsey (see index)
Jasper Francis Cropsey at the National Gallery of Art