Jasper Francis Cropsey

Summer, Lake Ontario, 1867

oil on canvas

15 x 24 in.

Gift of the Friends of the Museum

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Born on Staten Island, New York, Cropsey trained to be an architect.  His teacher encouraged him to enhance his architectural drawings with landscapes scenes, resulting in Cropsey’s change in focus from architecture to landscape painting.  Cropsey opened a studio in southeastern New York State. When he married in 1849, he and his wife took a two-year European honeymoon, traveling to England and Italy where he worked in the studio of Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School.  After returning to America, Cropsey began painting full-time.  In 1856, the Cropseys again traveled to Europe, spending seven years in London, England.  During his stay he fulfilled commissions from Americans wanting European subjects and European commissions for American scenes.  Cropsey was commissioned by the English lithographic house of E. Gambert and Company to create a series of thirty-six paintings of American subjects.  Although the series was never completed, at least eight were published in American Scenery, a portfolio of full size chromolithographs of these paintings. 

Summer, Lake Ontario was painted in England for the series of chromolithographs by E. Gambert and Company after Cropsey’s work. The painting was inspired directly by Frederic Church’s New England Scenery, 1851.  Crospey depicted America as a new Arcadia where settlers carve out a pastoral paradise from the wilderness while living in harmony with nature.  The serene sunset acts as a sign of God’s blessing on the land and establishes a sense of universal harmony.

Reference

Nancy Hall-Duncan. A Man for All Seasons: Jasper Francis Cropsey, Stamford, Ct.: Bruce Museum, 1988. ASIN: B00071PA4I