Jasper Francis Cropsey, Winter in Switzerland, 1861. Private collection. Photo via the-athenaeum.org.
Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900) is one of my favorite American painters. He was once of the so-called Hudson River School artists – nineteenth-century American artists who painted the then-undeveloped landscape of the adolescent United States. Cropsey is best known for his depictions of north eastern states such as New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, but his landscapes painted abroad are equally beautiful. While it’s not necessarily a Christmas painting, I love the serenity of the scene – the way the couple and their dog contrast so strongly against the white snow, and the tall cross drawing the eye up to the distant mountains and pale yellow sky.
Alexandra Kiely, aka A Scholarly Skater, is an art historian based in the northeastern United States. She loves wandering down the dark and dusty corners of art history and wholeheartedly believes in visual art's ability to enrich every person's life.
Her favorite periods of art history are 19th-century American painting and medieval European art and architecture. When she not looking at, reading about, writing about, or teaching art, she's probably ice dancing or reading.
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A Scholarly Skater 