The Old Home, Warwick, New York

The Old Home, Warwick, New York is a masterful composition illustrating Jasper Francis Cropsey's idiosyncratic style of realism, heightened by his command of color and subtle atmospheric effects. Dominated by overgrown foliage beneath a fiery sunset, the work's title is owed to the old home nestled in the landscape at center. The "old house in the mountains [is] a motif which introduces the notion of the vanishing frontier in the face of the urbanization of America." (B. Gallati, "Art Reviews: Sunset to Dawn," Arts Magazine, vol. LVIII, December 1983, p. 40). Indeed, Cropsey's work communicates a sense of nostalgia for the untouched wilderness and unaltered beauty of the landscape that he dedicated his career to capturing. Further, "The vivid sunset was probably influenced by a meteorological occurrence during the time that Cropsey painted his canvas. Donald Melville Barrell, who lived in Chester, NY, not far from Cropsey's summer home at Warwick, recorded...that 'in the fall of 1883 and the full year of 1884 the sunrises and sunsets were gorgeous. So much so that every painter of the time, who thought he ranked high, got out his paint and brushes and tried to put them on canvas...It was a mystery and all sorts of explanations were offered until it was learned on August 27, 1883, Krakatoa volcano, an island near Java, blew up with the most violent explosion known to man'" (A.M. Speiser, ed., Jasper Francis Cropsey, Catalogue Raisonné: Works in Oil, 1864-1884, Volume Two, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, 2016, p. 327).