Landscape View near Catskill Mountain House

Landscape View near Catskill Mountain House, of 1867, is a splendid example of Jasper Cropsey's gift for meticulously rendering light and atmosphere. In the present work, Cropsey places the viewer at an elevated vantage point looking down presumably toward Kaaterskill Clove, and more specifically, the Kaaterskill Falls as indicated by the artist's careful touches of white pigment in the distance. Likely painted en plein air while the artist was immersed in the wooded Catskill Mountains, the lush landscape is depicted with distinctive brushstrokes. The immediacy with which the brushstrokes were applied to the panel suggests the artist's confidence and familiarity with the landscape. Cropsey's choice of subject is not surprising, as the Catskill Mountain House was a hotel and tourist attraction visited by the upper echelons of New York society and captured in oil by many of the artist's contemporaries including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand and Frederic Edwin Church.

This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Jasper Francis Cropsey by the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.