Landscape with Figures near Rome

When twenty-four-year-old Jasper Cropsey journeyed to Italy from his native New York State in 1847, he was already working as an architect and landscape painter. This canvas, painted during his first year there, is indebted to art historical precedent. The carefully arranged composition, with distinct zones of fore-, middle- and background, framing foliage and picturesque ruins, evokes the idealized seventeenth-century scenes of the Roman Campagna by Claude Lorrain, who was still revered by aspiring landscape painters of all nationalities. The precise delineation of scenery also hints at Cropsey's mature work, realized after a seven-year residency in England during the late 1850s and early 1860s. There, under the influence of both theorist John Ruskin Pre-Raphaelites, whose strong colors and abundant detail had galvanized contemporary British painting, the artist adopted an atmospheric, yet highly particularized style. Returning to America in 1863, Cropsey enjoyed public acclaim, particularly for his studies of the effects of light on water. He also continued his career as an architect, notably designing the now-destroyed train stations for the Sixth Avenue Elevated Railway in New York City.