Autumn on Ramapo River, New Jersey

Executed in 1871, Jasper Cropsey's Autumn on the Ramapo River, New Jersey, is a splendid example of the work produced at the height of the artist's career. This large-scale work attests to the artist's ability to combine a painstaking record of the details of nature and his magnificent concept of the ideal landscape. Cropsey celebrates the wonders of autumn by infusing the landscape with the brilliant, warm colors of the autumnal trees which are punctuated by vivid greens. He has painstakingly recorded the wonders of autumn by rendering each leaf on each tree, each face of the rocks, and the serene, undisturbed surface of the lake. With the sun's rays dramatically piercing the composition and the trees reaching to the sky he evokes his own ideal vision of autumn in the northeast. The Ramapo River which runs through northern New Jersey, is in the heart of some of Cropsey's most beloved terrain. Many of the sites that are well-known in Cropsey's work, including Greenwood Lake and Lake Wawayanda, are in the surrounding area.

This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonn of the artist's work in preparation by the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.