American Art Collaborative

Jasper Francis Cropsey greatly admired the works of Thomas Cole, who was the first American painter to establish the country’s wilderness as an important subject for painting. In 1850, Cropsey stayed with Cole’s widow in the village of Catskill, where he visited the late artist’s studio and made several sketches of the landscape. (Myers, The Catskills, 1987) In this painting the windswept trees and dark tones of brown and orange evoke the aftermath of a passing storm
“It . . . is a very wild and picturesque gorge; down it rushes the cauterskill creek, which when swollen by heavy rains is a furious stream, could you but see the great rocks that have twirled over and over, and the immense trunks of trees . . .” Letter from the artist to his wife, September 24, 1850, quoted in Myers, The Catskills, 198