TOLEDO, OHIO.- The members of the Toledo Museum of Art’s Apollo Society recently selected Jasper Francis Cropsey’s 1859 landscape entitled Bonchurch, Isle of Wight as their 2004 gift to the Museum. The gem-like painting depicts a mother and children enjoying a serene moment near a pond and a village lane dappled with shadow and sunlight. This gift joins another of Cropsey’s most important American works—the autumnal scene entitled Starrucca Viaduct, Pennsylvania—which the Museum acquired in 1947.

According to TMA curator Lawrence W. Nichols, “Bonchurch, Isle of Wight presents a wonderful counterpoint to Starrucca Viaduct, Pennsylvania. In fact, this pairing of domestic and foreign scenery by one artist has parallels in several other TMA collection pairings, such as Thomas Cole’s The Architect’s Dream and The Vesper Hymn: An Italian Twilight, Sanford Gifford’s The Wilderness and Lake Nemi, and George Inness’s September Noon and The Tiber Below Perugia.”

Jasper Francis Cropsey was a leading American landscape painter of the second half of the 19th century and belonged to what is now known as the Hudson River School of painters. Cropsey drew inspiration from the landscape in Greenwood Lake, New Jersey, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley of New York. In so doing, he furthered an artistic treatment of nature developed earlier in the century by artists Thomas Doughty, Thomas Cole, and Asher B. Durand.

Following a two-year trip to Europe in 1847, Cropsey developed the imagery for which he would become renowned: the dazzling oranges and brilliant reds of the rural New England landscape in autumn. These vividly colorful renderings enhanced both Cropsey’s artistic reputation and his financial success during the 1860s.

During a seven-year residence in England, Cropsey spent the late summer of 1859 on the Isle of Wight located off the southern coast of England near Southampton. While there, Cropsey was inspired to paint images of the village of Bonchurch and its picturesque coastline, churchyards, and lanes. These paintings were well received at an 1860 exhibition at the Royal Academy, and it is likely that TMA’s Bonchurch, Isle of Wight was one of three Bonchurch scenes Cropsey showed that year. The London Times review on May 17, 1860, noted that in these paintings, Cropsey showed as much care and affection for the English landscape as he had for the pastoral American scenes for which he was best known.

Since its founding in 1986, the members of the Apollo Society have acquired more than 30 works of art for the TMA collection, for a total gift of more than $3 million. Members meet in the fall to select an area or medium on which to focus during the year, and again in the spring to vote upon the purchase of a work (or works) of art presented by a TMA curator. Previous Apollo Society gifts include Chuck Close’s photorealist painting Alex in 1987 and Vilhelm Hammershøi’s painting Interior of Courtyard, Strandgade 30 in 2000. The 75 members of the Apollo Society will meet October 3, 2004, to choose the 2005 collecting focus.