Having been trained as an architect, Jasper Francis Cropsey transitioned seamlessly into painting, with only minimal training with Edward Maury, A British painter who gave him watercolor lessons, and several life drawings classes at the National Academy of Design. It was primarily his innate talent and sensitivity toward nature which made Cropsey the esteemed artist he is still thought of today. He is hailed as one of the key figures in the Luminist tradition of American landscape painting, renowned for his depictions of vibrant autumn colors, naturalistic sunlit landscapes and the way which he captured the sun's glow on the surface of the water.

Born in Rossville, Staten Island, Cropsey lived for most of his life in Hastings-on-Hudson and painted extensively in the Hudson River Valley. As was common among 19th century American painters, Cropsey traveled to Europe where he found great inspiration in new and foreign landscapes - particular those Italian - which offered a different quality of light. Early in his career, he was placed on the same tier as the most accomplished and venerated Hudson River School painters. A critic of the National Academy of Design's exhibition of 1847 commented in Literary World (New York) May 8, 1847:

Mr. Cropsey is one of the few among our landscape painters who go directly to Nature from their materials…and it is no disparagement to the abilities of those veterans of landscape art, Cole and Durand, to prophesy that before many years have elapsed, he will stand with them in the front rank, shoulder to shoulder.

Between the years 1847 and 1849 Cropsey studied in Italy where he worked out of Thomas Cole's studio in Rome. Cole died in 1848, but his powerful presence remained and continued to inspire the young Cropsey. Nowhere is Cole's influence more evident than in the vibrant clarity and attention to detail present in our painting, titled Villa d'Este, Tivoli.

Sitting about 20 miles east of Rome, the ancient town of Tivoli lies at the falls of the Aniene River. The Villa d'Este was commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este (1509-1572) who had been appointed Governor of Tivoli by Pope Julius III in 1550 with the gift of the villa (which earlier had been confiscated from the Benedictines by the papacy in the thirteenth century, for use as a governor's residence). Cardinal d'Este had the existing villa reconstructed to create a palatial setting surrounded by a fabulous terraced garden in the late-Renaissance mannerist style, which took full advantage of the dramatic slope of this area.

In Villa d'Este, Tivoli, Cropsey creates a fully breathtaking scene replete with silhouetted Roman ruins, a shepherd with his goats grazing on the steep hill, the flowing Aniene River in the distance, and several different trees and plants indigenous to central Italy. The expansive, cloudless, pale blue sky hovers gracefully above the verdant landscape below. The scene is rendered majestic not only by the lush foliage, spectacular vista and the sunlit villa rising in the left of the composition with the Tiburtini Mountains in the distance, but also by the placement of figures within the middle ground to heighten the sense of dramatic scale. Cropsey adheres to the Transcendentalist tenets of the Hudson River School that God's omnipotence resonated in the unmarred, pristine beauty of nature's sublime elements. Applying American theory to European scenes, he imbues vitality into each detail of natural life, and the finished composition is a realistic representation of the landscape, emanating peace and tranquility. In the case of our painting he gracefully weaves the human-made (ancient, past and present) with the natural for complete visual harmony.

Cropsey enjoyed an illustrious career as one of the leading proponents of the Hudson River School. He exhibited extensively at the National Academy of Design where he was elected full Academician in 1851. He also exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Brooklyn Art Association, Brooklyn, NY; Royal Academy of London, Boston Athenaeum, Boston Art Club, and the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. His work is housed in The White House, Washington, DC; Hermitage Museum, Russia; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Peabody Institute, Baltimore, MD; and many other notable institutions.