A 19th-century American landscape that hasn’t been seen in public for more than 150 years is now on display at the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, writes Bedatri D. Choudhury for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Autumn in the Ramapo Valley, Erie Railway (1873) by Jasper Francis Cropsey, a Hudson River School painter, was commissioned to commemorate a change in the control of the Erie Railway.
It stayed in private collections after a brief public showing in 1873.
The oil painting presents a fall landscape, with blazing foliage, calm water, and distant hills .
A steam train can be seen cutting through the valley, and its subtle appearance reflects the era’s fascination with progress and industrial power.
The painting was recently acquired by philanthropists J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox and returned to the United States.
“This painting really helps tell a fuller story of American art at a moment when enormous ambition and enormous resources came together,” said William L. Coleman, director of the Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center.
The work is featured in the exhibition Cropsey, Wyeth, and the American Landscape Tradition, on view through May 31.
Read more about the history behind this 1873 painting in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
