Stonehenge

Artist Jasper Francis Cropsey (American, 1823 - 1900)

Date1876

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 24 1/4 × 54 1/8 inches (61.6 × 137.48 cm)
Framed: 34 3/8 × 64 1/4 × 2 1/8 inches (87.33 × 163.2 × 5.41 cm)

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Thomas King Baker and Mrs. George H. Bunting Jr.

Object number81-11

SignedSigned and dated lower right: J. F. Cropsey / 1876

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionLandscape painting of the stone megaliths of Stonehenge (Salisbury Plain, England) as seen in mid- to late afternoon, set on the flat downs with sheep grazing in foreground at left and right, as well as two shepherds conversing at right in middle distance, one resting against a stone fragment; at far right, an unobstructed view into distant pastrelands with clouds overhead.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., December 2, 1977–January 22, 1978, no. 45.

Gallery Label

Jasper Cropsey based this view of England's most famous prehistoric site on sketches he had made during a tour of Europe 27 years earlier. The painting's warm palette and relatively loose brushwork create a moody, romantic glow. Stonehenge is part of a series Cropsey executed of Old World ruins, which remained popular subjects among 19th-century American collectors.

Cropsey employed a technique called pouncing so that he could use drawings as guides for a painting. Tiny holes are pricked into the paper along the drawn lines and then the paper is placed over the canvas. The pricked drawing is rubbed with charcoal, leaving transferred dotted lines on the surface below. The remnants of Cropsey's method are only visible under infrared light.

Provenance

Felix Hinsberg, Passaic, N.J., 1877;

to (Anderson Galleries, New York, December 16–17, 1912, lot 293);

William B. Beam, Hackensack, N.J., by 1914;

(Victor D. Spark, New York, by 1977);

to Mila H. Baker, Kansas City, Mo., and Karen Dean Bunting, Shawnee Mission, Kans., 1977;

to NAMA, 1981.

Published References

“Fine Arts,” Commercial Advertiser (New York), January 30, 1877, 1 (as Stone Henge, Salisbury Plains, England).

“Art and Artists,” Home Journal, February 14, 1877, clipping, NAMA curatorial files.

“Local Items,” Jewish Messenger (New York), June 22, 1877, 2.

Anderson Galleries, New York, 16–17 December 1912, lot 293 (as Stonehenge, England).

William S. Talbot, Jasper F. Cropsey, 1823–1900 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1977), 207–8, 461 (as Stonehenge, Salisbury Plains).

Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1977), 40.

An Unprejudiced Eye: The Drawings of Jasper F. Cropsey, exh. cat. (Yonkers, N.Y.: Hudson River Museum, 1979), 35.

Ross E. Taggart, “American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri,” Antiques 122 (November 1982), 1038.

Gertrude Grace Sill, “Americans Abroad,” Portfolio: The Magazine of Fine Arts 5 (March–April 1983), 72–73.

Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 92.

Peter J. Casagrande, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Unorthodox Beauty (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992), cover.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collections. 6^th ed. (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 228, 236.

Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 205–209, 2: 96–97.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 166.

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