Cropsey is best known today not for paintings like The Spirit of War (fig. 1 ) and The Spirit of Peace (fig. 2 ), but as the creator of landscapes celebrating the glories of American autumnal scenery, such as his masterpiece Autumn-on the Hudson River of 1860 (fig. 3 ). Indeed, so thoroughly is Cropsey associated with the imagery of Hudson River School landscape painting that some viewers might be surprised he actually created these elaborate imaginary pictures. Surely what they depict-a rocky, storm-tossed mountain landscape with a heavily fortified castle, knights on horseback, and a burning village on the one hand, and a sunny, semi-tropical coastal scene with classical architecture, a bustling harbor town, and men and women walking, dancing, and conversing peacefully on the other-seems quite literally worlds away from the Hudson River Valley and the Catskill Mountains.
Cropsey's contemporaries, however, would have had no difficulty recognizing The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace as being by him, for they considered them among his most important achievements. Exhibited seven times between 1852 and 1857 in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, the paintings were discussed and praised in leading newspapers and journals. However, not long after this widespread public exposure they dropped from view, accessible only in the private home of Joseph Harrison, Jr., a leading Philadelphia collector. 2 In 1912 , when Harrison's estate was sold, the pictures went to different buyers, separated after sixty-one years. The Spirit of Peace did not go far, for it joined the private collection of Charles Knox Smith, another Philadelphian, in his grand Chestnut Hill house (now the Woodmere Art Museum). The Spirit of War was not so fortunate, and gradually slipped into obscurity. In 1978 it was rediscovered in a barn in the Adirondack region of New York State, miraculously preserved in excellent condition, and still housed in an original gilt frame identical to that on The Spirit of Peace. This exhibition marks the first time since 1857 the two paintings have appeared together publically. Now that they can be seen and understood in the way Cropsey intended-as pendants exploring a complex series of ideas and employing a carefully constructed system of contrasting elements- The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace can legitimately reclaim their place of prominence among the artist's most important works.
Cropsey's Early Career
Jasper Francis Cropsey was born in Rossville, on Staten Island, New York on 18
February 1823 . At an early age he became interested in architecture and in 1837-
1842 worked as an apprentice in the office of a New York city architect. In 1843
Cropsey established his own architectural practice in New York, but he also began
exhibiting paintings. In 1844 he was elected an associate of the National Academy of
Design in New York, an event that signalled his intentions to pursue a career as a
painter. Following his marriage in May 1847 , Cropsey traveled extensively in Europe,
visiting England, France, and Italy. While in Rome in 1847- 1848 he used the same
studio that Thomas Cole ( 1801- 1848 ) had occupied in 1841- 1842 when he painted
the replica set (now in the National Gallery) of his famous four-canvas series The
Voyage of Life. Cropsey returned to America in 1849 , intent on establishing his
reputation as a landscape painter; he began exhibiting his works regularly and was
elected to full membership in the National Academy in 1851 .
Landscape painting underwent a remarkable development during the first half of the
nineteenth century in America, rising from relative obscurity to preeminence. This was
due largely to the efforts of Cole, whose dramatic wilderness images such as Sunrise
in the Catskills ( 1826 , National Gallery of Art), found immediate favor with patrons
and critics. Cole was much indebted to European prototypes, in particular the works of
such revered landscape painters as Salvator Rosa ( 1615- 1673 ) and Claude Lorrain (
1620- 1691 ), but he tempered these foreign influences with a close study of American
nature. His finished landscapes employed effects of composition and lighting that paid
homage to the grand traditions of art embodied by Old Masters, but were also
innovative in the way they captured the actual look and feel of American scenery. In
spite of his early success, Cole was not long content with painting only pure
landscapes, for his overriding ambition was to create what he called "a higher
style of landscape" in which he could express complex ideas about man and his
place in the world. 3 Realizing that paired pictures would allow for greater thematic
development, he created in 1827- 1828 his first efforts in this "higher
style," The Garden of Eden (fig. 4 ) and Expulsion from the Garden of Eden
(fig. 5 ).
During the 1830 s and until his untimely death in 1848 , Cole divided his time
between painting relatively straightforward landscapes, sometimes of New World scenes
(for example, The Notch of The White Mountains (Crawford Notch) ( 1839 , National
Gallery of Art), other times of Old World subjects ( Italian Coast Scene with Ruined
Tower, 1838 , National Gallery of Art), and elaborate serial images such as The
Voyage of Life. Other artists, such as Asher B. Durand ( 1796- 1886 ), were encouraged
by Cole's success and also became full-time landscape painters in the 1840 s, as did
Cole's most significant pupil, Frederic Edwin Church ( 1826- 1900 ). And Jasper
Cropsey, as we have seen, turned his attention from architecture to landscape painting
in 1843, no doubt also inspired by Cole.
Many of Cropsey's early works are meticulous, close-up views that suggest his natural
inclination was for a highly realistic depiction of nature. In fact, he stated his
beliefs clearly in an 1845 lecture: "I find in recalling to mind those
[artists] that have the greatest works (I have reference to landscape only) have
been the most attentive to nature...their best works or the works that met with the
most admiration, are their nearest approaches to nature." 4 Nevertheless,
Cropsey also felt the pull of Cole's "higher style of landscape," as did
Durand, Church, and others. Thus, in the early years of his career he also created
several imaginary works based on sources from literature and poetry. In the years
immediately after Cole's death Cropsey faced a dilemma that was shared by other
aspiring American landscape painters. Should he follow Cole's example as the painter
of American landscapes or emulate the higher style of painting Cole considered far
more important? There is ample evidence that Cropsey, in addition to advocating
"the nearest approaches to Nature," also deeply admired the power of Cole's
imagination. As he said after Cole's death: "Though the man has departed, yet he
has left a spell behind him that is not broken...we feel more than ever the devotion,
genius and spirit of the man." 5 Not everyone, however, was equally affected by
that spell, for even during Cole's lifetime some critics and patrons expressed their
preference for recognizable depictions of American (and, to a lesser extent, European)
scenes. By the late 1840 s and early 1850 s, as the "truth to nature"
aesthetic of the English writer John Ruskin became widely influential in America, the
critical debate over real versus imaginary landscapes became even more strident. Some
critics argued that promising landscape painters like Cropsey and Church should
abandon imaginary painting altogether, considering it ill-suited to the needs of a
nation that was still establishing its own cultural identity. It would be better, they
suggested, to attend to the "truth" of American nature than to use paint and
canvas to teach moral lessons or strive for poetic sentiment.
Cropsey was surely aware of these conflicting opinions, and he doubtless realized
that critical and economic success might eventually depend on acceding to the changing
taste. But when he painted The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace Cropsey had
clearly not abandoned his allegiance to Cole's higher style. Although hardly an
unknown in the world of American art, he was not yet in 1851 reckoned one of its
leaders. Cole's death had left a vacuum, and talented men like Durand and Church were
vying for the premier spot among American landscape painters. One way to demonstrate a
full mastery of landscape painting was to conceive and execute complex and dramatic
imaginary works that would rival anything Cole had ever done. Thus it was that Durand
painted his Landscape, Scene from "Thanatopsis" ( 1850 , Metropolitan
Museum of Art) and God's Judgment Upon Gog ( 1852 , Chrysler Museum, Norfolk), and
Church created The Plague of Darkness in 1849 and The Deluge in 1851 (both
unlocated). And thus it was, too, that Cropsey, in emulation of Cole and in
competition with his fellow artists, created The Spirit of War and The Spirit of
Peace. At a time when the influence of Cole's "higher style" was at its
greatest, Cropsey's pair is arguably the clearest and most fully expressed evidence of
that influence, and the most faithful to the departed painter's lofty ideals. As a
contemporary observed: "The subjects are treated in the true spirit of poetry,
abounding in all the excellencies which gave the lamented Cole such empire over the
feelings of the soul." 6
Creating Images of War and Peace
We do not know with certainty why Cropsey chose the theme of war and peace for his
pair of pictures, but the seriousness of his intentions was clear. Not only were these
the largest canvases he had yet attempted, they were by far the most complicated in
composition and the most complex in conception. The Spirit of War and The Spirit of
Peace were, he said, his "first efforts in this class of art," and in them
he hoped "to express on canvass [ sic] the highest intellectual expressions"
(see Appendix). The very fact that Cropsey chose to paint not one, but two large
pictures, at the cost of considerable time and effort, indicates that he, like Cole,
understood the expanded possibilities for expressing content and meaning a pair
offered. 7 Paired paintings, or pendants, had been created by European artists from
the Middle Ages on, with landscape pairs particularly in vogue during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. 8 Cropsey would surely have known, if only through prints
or descriptions, pendant landscapes by painters such as Claude Lorrain, which often
presented contrasting times of day and different types of scenery or opposing themes.
But the example of Cole was, of course, closer at hand, and undoubtedly exerted the
immediate influence. Cropsey probably had Cole's first pendant landscapes, the Eden
pictures of 1827- 1828 , specifically in mind as he began work on his own "first
efforts in this class of art." Certainly the contrast of moods in Cole's
paintings-the fiery drama of the Expulsion versus the lyrical beauty of The
Garden-accords perfectly with the opposing moods of Cropsey's War and Peace. 9
One thing particularly surprising about The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace,
especially considering their size and complexity, is that no preliminary drawings or
oil sketches unquestionably related to either painting are known today. This may be
purely an accident of survival, for such studies do exist for other works. But Cropsey
often referred to studies of scenery, architecture, or figures in his sketchbooks for
general, rather than specific inspiration. And certainly there are many pages in his
pre- 1851 sketchbooks with details of medieval and classical architecture, mountain
scenes, pastoral landscapes, trees, figures, and animals that would have been useful
in painting War and Peace. But we should also keep in mind that the very act of
painting this kind of imaginary landscape required a special approach. As Cropsey
said, "In their treatment I wished to avoid all that might be repulsive or
commonplace, and to give rather an abstract expression of the subject than an actual
one, such as a poet might be supposed to give" (see Appendix). Thus, we can
reasonably assume he relied largely on memory and imagination in working out specific
details in the two pictures.
In broader terms, two paintings by Cole seem to have played important roles as
Cropsey developed the general conceptions of his pictures. The Spirit of War
unquestionably resembles Cole's The Departure (one of a pair with The Return; figs.
6 and 7 ), which has a similar mountainous setting, hilltop castle, stone bridge
with pointed arches, and knights mounted on horseback. Cropsey himself implicitly
acknowledged their kinship when he described his picture using the same lines from Sir
Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel Cole had earlier used as a text for The
Departure. 10 But if the relationship between The Spirit of War and The Departure
seems obvious, the same cannot be said about The Spirit of Peace and The Return. In
Cole's pair the narrative is more or less continuous: the quest that began at dawn one
morning with knights riding out to do battle has ended some later day at sunset, as
the vanquished warriors return home. The landscape is also continuous (or more
properly, contiguous), for what shifts is not location, but the vantage point of the
viewer, which rotates 180 degrees. Cropsey's The Spirit of Peace, by contrast,
takes us to a different time and place, from the mountains to the seashore, from a
time of warfare to one of peace, from a world of things medieval to one where the
spirit of the classical reigns. That we are still in the same general region of this
imaginary world is suggested only by the distinctive mountain peaks in the left
background, which recall those in The Spirit of War.
Thus, Cropsey must have looked to another work by Cole in conceiving The Spirit of
Peace, one with an idealized, arcadian mood more suitable to the imagery of peaceful
existence. Cole painted several
such works, but his Dream of Arcadia (fig. 8 ) comes closest to The Spirit of
Peace. Although differing in specifics of architecture and setting, the two share key
motifs (figures dancing in a woodland glade, goats being tended, a prominently placed
mother and child) and a common elegiac mood. Cropsey certainly knew The Dream of
Arcadia; in fact, he admired it enough to own an engraving of it. 11
Given Cropsey's early training as an architect, it is not surprising that buildings
play a major role in both The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace, assuming far
more prominent places than man-made structures generally did in Cole's works. While in
Europe in 1847- 1849 Cropsey had visited many famous architectural sites and made
detailed sketches of castles, temples, towers, and other buildings. Although the
structures in The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace do not precisely derive from
specific architectural monuments, two that particularly interested Cropsey may have
been on his mind. One was the great castle at Warwick, England, which he visited in
June 1849 , sketched in detail, and later made the subject of a finished oil (fig. 9).
The other was the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, Italy, which Cropsey saw in
October 1848 and made the subject of at least a half-dozen paintings, the first of
which appeared as an engraving in 1851 (fig. 10 ). More generally, the medieval and
classical buildings in The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace echo the
architectural tastes of the era, which was marked by a highly eclectic use of
historical styles. By 1851 banks, colleges, government buildings, and private houses
based on Greek and Roman temple forms were common across America, as were structures
using a variety of medieval styles. For Americans who had seen such buildings as
William Strickland's Merchants Exchange in Philadelphia ( 1832- 1834 ), with its
semi-circular Corinthian colonnade, or James Renwick's Smithsonian Institution in
Washington ( 1847- 1855 ), with its irregular silhouette of towers and turrets, the
temple and castle in Cropsey's paintings may have evoked a foreign time and place, but
they would also have seemed strangely familiar.
The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace Exhibited
We do not know precisely how long Cropsey spent painting The Spirit of War and The
Spirit of Peace, but the account in the Bulletin of the American Art-Union tells us
they were nearing completion in December 1851 . We also know that Cropsey first
showed the paintings in his own studio in New York. This was not an unprecedented act,
for other artists occasionally debuted particularly important works in this manner.
The advantages were many: the viewing conditions could be controlled; the artist did
not have to wait for one of the major art exhibitions held only in the fall and the
spring; the work could be seen alone, without competition from the hundreds of other
pictures that were customarily included in the exhibitions of the National Academy of
Design and the American Art-Union; a publicity campaign, if carefully managed and
orchestrated, could be used to encourage interest in the pictures (and perhaps attract
potential buyers). Cropsey seems to have paid particular attention to this last
matter. The Bulletin of the American Art-Union did more than just take note of his
new works; it also published lengthy descriptions of each picture. These descriptions
were said to have been sent by "a friend." 12 Evidence strongly indicates
this "friend" was none other than Cropsey himself, for the language used is
closely paralleled by his words in a subsequent letter that survives in draft (see
Appendix). 13 These texts provide valuable and detailed descriptions of each
painting:
The Spirit of War.-The material of this picture is that of feudal times. Storm and
tempest have raged during the night. The first rays of the morning sun spread a red
and lurid light over the scene; it gleams through heavy mist and storm-clouds, upon a
dark and gloomy castle, which crowns a rocky and inaccessible eminence. Its halls have
rung with revelry, while an enemy have passed up the valley, sacking and burning the
little hamlets, and are now seen watching the flames. They are discovered; the beacon
fires blaze from the summit of the mountain-the alarm is given, and the feasting
knights ride out with precipitate haste for battle; the goatherd drives his frightened
flock to the castle-keep for safety; the mother and child, having fled from the
burning town, lie exhausted at the road-side; in the craggy rock, upon which stands
the castle, is seen the wizard, invoking evil.
The deep red banners-the red lurid light and conflagration-are suggestive of blood
and carnage; the disarrangement of pastoral life and domestic unhappiness follow in
the footsteps of war.
The Spirit of Peace.-Here the sun is setting with a mellow light, while the new moon
smiles upon a partially new scene; for now the ocean comes in view, and the
snow-covered mountains are distantly seen. The spirit of war and its associations are
buried in the silence and peace of the tomb. By the sculpture upon it of a knight,
followed by the figure of Death, bearing burning torches, and treading over the dead,
the pictures are identified. Palm and olive trees grow upon the ruin of War's strong
towers, and amid them has arisen a temple to Peace, from the altar of which ascends a
spontaneous and unceasing incense to the sky. At the temple is a statue of the lion,
lamb, and child together, and sculptured upon its pedestal are the incidents of
turning "their swords into plowshares," and "their spears into
pruning-hooks." Industry, Agriculture, and Commerce are indicated by the
cultivated fields, the busy and growing appearance of the town, and sails which
"whiten the sea." Where, in the picture of War, originated Evil and Sorrow,
is now Happiness, Pleasure, and Learning, suggested by the happy mother, and the
goatherd gently leading his flock, the dancing and merry-making group and the figures
of History and Science.
Upon the frieze of the temple is sculptured, in the principal compartment, the angel
appearing to the shepherds, announcing the birth of the highest Peace Advocate-the
Saviour, accompanied by the words-"On earth, peace." The other compartments
contain incidents from His life. In one, His Sermon on the Mount, with the
inscription-"Blessed are the peace-makers." In another His blessing of
little children, and in the last one, His triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and the
passage-"Peace in Heaven." The cornice is formed of the wheat-sheaf and
palm-branch-emblems of peace and plenty. Open to all is the altar of the Temple; in
relief upon it are angels, supporting a book, written with letters of gold, as though
from the heart up through the influences of the sacred volume there breathes a pure
and acceptable peace-incense to God.
Although many people could have seen The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace on
view in Cropsey's studio (we have no records telling us), certainly far more had the
opportunity once the paintings began appearing in public exhibitions. Their first such
appearance was at the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design, which
opened in April 1852 . Hung in the first gallery of the Academy's building on
Broadway, they must have stood out dramatically among the seventy-nine other
portraits, landscapes, and figure pictures also shown in that room and, indeed, among
the 471 works in the entire exhibition. The exhibition catalogue printed
descriptions of the pictures, again apparently based on Cropsey's own words. 14
Perhaps the only other landscape that could challenge The Spirit of War and The
Spirit of Peace for attention was Durand's God's Judgment upon Gog, which was hung in
the second gallery.
Although generally well received in their first official public appearance, Cropsey's
pictures were faulted by some for their highly detailed handling. George William
Curtis, critic of the New-York Tribune, found Cropsey "too conscientious....Each
spire of grass, each shrinking leaf must appear upon canvas, because it really exists
in nature." 15 Although he praised "the great fertility of his
imagination," Curtis concluded that Cropsey had failed in obtaining a harmonious
composition. "Fine words do not make a poem," he wrote, and
"Picturesque forms, brilliantly painted, do not make a good picture." But
Cropsey had deliberately attempted to do exactly what Curtis criticized: use precise
detail to give his imaginary compositions some sense of the real world. Other
landscape painters, including Church and Durand, were doing the same, seeing it as a
way to make Cole's higher style more palatable to the taste of the times. Cropsey was
particularly good at it, for even given their imaginary qualities, one notices again
and again in his pictures insistent details of reality. Whether it is the faithfully
delineated skunk cabbage at the lower left of The Spirit of War, or the lovingly
detailed palm trees in The Spirit of Peace, Cropsey infused his ideal worlds with
unmistakable signs of the real.
The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace were shown again in New York in 1853 and
subsequently at the Boston Atheneum in 1855 . They were also shown on four separate
occasions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Cropsey's
satisfaction with the pictures is evidenced by the fact that he subsequently borrowed
from each to create major new works. The general medieval theme and specific details
of The Spirit of War recur in his Days of Elizabeth (fig. 11 ), a more
light-hearted evocation of the days of chivalry. Even more impressive is his reworking
of The Spirit of Peace in a painting called The Millennial Age (fig. 12 ), perhaps
the most richly symbolic work of his entire career. The general setting of the earlier
painting and its lyrical mood were retained, but the circular temple has been replaced
with an extraordinary sculptural group that was present only in nascent form in The
Spirit of Peace.
By the time of the last public appearance of The Spirit of War and The Spirit of
Peace in 1857 , popular and critical enthusiasm for imaginary and allegorical
landscapes had largely waned. Cropsey himself was by then already known for works such
as Indian Summer Morning in the White Mountains ( 1857 , Currier Gallery of Art,
Manchester, New Hampshire), which depicted American scenery in all its autumnal
splendor. Never again after the mid- 1850 s would he paint works like The Spirit of
War and The Spirit of Peace that so obviously emulated Cole's allegorical manner.
However, through such efforts he had mastered an approach to landscape painting that
assembled elements as a vocabulary for imparting content rather than simply as a means
for describing natural appearances. That, in the end, was the fundamental lesson
Cropsey learned from Cole, and it was something he never forgot. Thus, as first
chapters in a long story, The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace provide
information crucial to grasping the full measure of Cropsey's achievement as a painter
of American scenery.
The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace in Context: Meaning and
Interpretation
Cropsey's intentions in The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace, and what the
paintings mean, singly and together, may seem so obvious as to require no further
comment. After all, war and peace are enduring facts of human history, giving them a
familiarity of meaning that approaches the universal. Certainly America, born of
revolution and involved in several international conflicts during the first half of
the nineteenth century, knew well the alternating cycles of wartime strife and
peaceful prosperity. And in that sense Cropsey's paintings, though ostensibly set in
some indefinite time in the Old World, had meanings that Americans of the
mid-nineteenth century could easily grasp. Through a series of carefully opposed
elements the artist showed how the hardships and privations of war are countered by
the pleasures and bounties of peace. War is set in a stern, cold and rocky landscape;
peace in a gentle, warm, pastoral one. Storm clouds at sunrise give way to the clear
skies of late afternoon. The castle and its knights, embodiments of conflict, are
replaced by a temple and dancers. In War a mother and child and a herdsman with his
flock flee their burning village, desperately trying to reach safety, while their
counterparts in Peace go their way untroubled. The sorcerer who stands in a dark cave
in a ring of fire casting his evil spell in The Spirit of War, is replaced in The
Spirit of Peace by men (representing History and Science, according to Cropsey)
standing in the bright light of day by a sarcophagus and discussing (one imagines) the
lessons of the past and the futility of armed strife. Other examples of such
contrasting elements could be cited, but it is clear Cropsey intended all the various
elements of his landscapes, whether natural forms or ones associated with mankind and
human activities, to play roles in conveying meaning.
Moreover, Cropsey shared, as we have seen, Cole's belief that the landscape painter's
most serious duty lay in using his art to convey "the highest intellectual
expressions." And those expressions, in turn, needed to be intelligible to the
painter's audience and have some larger significance beyond the confines of art.
Recent scholarship on American nineteenth-century landscape painting has argued that
for artists like Cropsey and Church such larger significance may have come through
associating their images with issues of national identity. 16 If that is correct,
then the political and social events in America around 1851 must be considered.
Certainly the period that preceded the creation of Copley's paintings was one marked
by a particularly controversial armed conflict: the Mexican-American War of 1846-
1848 , in which America demonstrated a highly aggressive expansionism. Perhaps that
war was, in part, a factor in Cropsey's decision to paint his images of war and peace,
but another event even closer in time may also have played a role. The national debate
over whether or not slavery should expand into new territories (including the western
territories acquired in Mexican-American War) led to widespread feelings of anxiety in
the late 1840 s. The Compromise of 1850 , which attempted to reconcile the various
sectional antagonisms, seemed to many observers to pave the way for national peace. If
Cropsey shared this hopeful attitude, his paintings might be seen as celebrating the
avoidance of war on the one hand and predicting a new period of peace and plenty on
the other.
It would seem this last interpretation is indeed correct, for Cropsey's The
Millennial Age of three years later reasserts his hopes for peace in even stronger
terms. 17 In the same way, we can read his Autumn-on the Hudson River (fig. 3 ) as
an entirely naturalistic statement of his enduring belief that the American nation was
following a virtuous course. Though not an imaginary scene like The Spirit of War and
The Spirit of Peace, Autumn can be read in a similarly allegorical way, with the
various elements functioning as parts of the larger story. Thus the very progression
of the landscape from near to far and from wilderness to civilization (with all the
appropriate attendant symbols-hunters, log cabin, rustic road, village, city, and so
on) serves as a metaphor for the nation itself and the course it has taken. Nothing
suggests that course will be interrupted; the sun shines benignly in the western sky,
its rays seeming to radiate God's blessing on a chosen people.
Cropsey was living in London when he painted Autumn-on the Hudson River, so perhaps
he did not recognize the signs that all was not well with the America of 1860 . Or
perhaps he chose to ignore them. But the conflicts that had simmered up around 1850
were only momentarily quelled by the Compromise of 1850 , and flared up again at
various times during the rest of the decade, eventually erupting in the apocalyptic
violence of the Civil War. Cropsey, of course, had no way of knowing it when he
painted The Spirit of War, but it ultimately proved to be far more prophetic than its
companion. He may have hoped for the sunny skies of peace, and he may have used his
art to express that hope with eloquent conviction, but something in him must have
sensed that the storm clouds of war would always inevitably return.
~Franklin Kelly
Curator, American and British Painting
Photo credits (only illustrations 1 and 2 are reproduced in this electronic version of the brochure)
1. Jasper Francis Cropsey, The Spirit of War, 1851, oil on canvas, 43 5/8 x 67 5/8 in. (110.8 x 171.6 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington. Avalon Fund. 1978.12.1.
2. Jasper Francis Cropsey, The Spirit of Peace, 1851, oil on canvas, 43 3/4 x 67 in. (111.2 x 170.2 cm). The Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia. Charles Knox Smith Collection.
3. Jasper Francis Cropsey, Autumn-on the Hudson River, 1860, oil on canvas, 59 3/4 x 108 1/4 in. (151.8 x 274.9 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of the Avalon Foundation. 1963.9.1.
4. Thomas Cole, The Garden of Eden, 1827-1828, oil on canvas, 38 1/2 x 52 3/4 in. (97.8 x 134 cm). Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth, Texas. 1990.10.
5. Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1827-1828, oil on canvas, 39 x 54 in. (99.1 x 137.2 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Mrs. Maxim Karolik for the Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815-1865.
6. Thomas Cole, The Departure, 1838, oil on canvas, 39 1/2 x 63 in. (100.4 x 160 cm). The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of William Wilson Corcoran.
7. Thomas Cole, The Return, 1838, oil on canvas, 39 3/4 x 63 in. (101 x 160 cm). The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of William Wilson Corcoran.
8. Thomas Cole, Dream of Arcadia, 1838, oil on canvas, 39 1/4 x 63 1/16 in. (99.7 x 160.2 cm). The Denver Art Museum. Gift of Mrs. Katherine H. Gentry.
9. Jasper Francis Cropsey, Warwick Castle, 1857, oil on canvas, 31 5/8 x 52 1/4 in. (78.9 x 132.1 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Hirschl, in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art. 1991.142.1.
10. After Jasper Francis Cropsey, Temple of the Sibyl, at Tivoli, engraving from Bulletin of the American Art-Union, December 1851. Courtesy of Library, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
11. Jasper Francis Cropsey, Days of Elizabeth, oil on canvas, 38 x 54 in. (96.5 x 137.2 cm). Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
12. Jasper Francis Cropsey, The Millennial Age, oil on canvas, 38 x 54 in. (96.5 x 137.2 cm). Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
In reply to your letter I must begin by thanking you for the admiration and kindness you express, and the confidence you repose in me.
I have always been impressed with the idea that an artist to do justice to himself and his art should seek to express on his canvass the highest intellectual expressions, adding thereto all the refinement of poetry, and a well guided imagination his thoughts should be pure and noble and the style simple but firm and I trust that my works and self may be worthy of it and merely not wasted on trifles-polished smoothness and excessive imitation, nor to the other extreme of dashy handling and gaudy colour, often other terms for crud[e]ness and a discuised substitute for talent: always there should be the characteristics of intelligence and a firm settled conceinciousness a dwelling upon detail where the subject required it, and his heart entered into it-again free and graceful where his spirit flowed lightly and his labours seemed easy; thus will his work come forth the type of his mind and give to the car[e]ful observer the corresponding pleasure and instruction
It was because I loved to be at that which gave me more oppertunities for thought and study than the ordinary every day kinds of art, which artists are apt to designate as "pot boilers" and patrons as "very pleasing"-"pretty bits Ä