Harvard Art Museums

Morning Fog

Jasper Francis CropseyLinkedCulture matchlcp-66e62b488608

Date: c. 1854-1855
Medium: Oil on artist's board
Culture: American
Department: Department of American Paintings, Sculpture & Decorative Arts
Institution: Harvard Art Museums
Object ID: 50600

From the Harvard Art Museums record

What do you see? What might you hear in such a place? Situated where land, sea, and sky meet, we gaze out across the Atlantic Ocean at midmorning. A much-reduced palette and nearly imperceptible brushwork lend this painting of coastal fog a suffused luminosity that speaks to broader cultural tensions. Landscape and maritime painting flourished across the Americas in the 19th century. As countries won autonomy from European powers, artists fortified burgeoning national identities with lush, atmospheric scenes meticulously composed. The advent of geology and photography provided many countries, including the United States, with domestic art movements. “Littoral,” or shore, scenes grew in prevalence as political tensions around abolition, expansionism, and industrialization rose.For Cropsey, the rocky shores of Rhode Island symbolized the contradictions at the heart of cultural discourse. What were spaces of beauty, leisure, and spiritual renewal for some were unceded homelands and spaces of commerce, death, and hard labor for others.

View at Harvard Art Museums ↗

The authoritative record is held by Harvard Art Museums. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page

See at Harvard Art Museums

Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Provenance: Mrs. Richard (Helen Rutherfurd, née Ely) Meade, by 1936. City Art Museum of Saint Louis, 1936, deaccessioned and sold [through Kende Galleries at Gimbel Brothers, New York, September 21-22, 1945, lot 226]. [1] [Alexander Gallery, New York, by 1979 as "Coastal View"]. [Adams Davidson Galleries, Washington, D.C., 1980, as "Sprouting Rock, Newport"]. [Frank Green of Fran-Glow Fine Arts, London, 1980]. Private Collection, England. [Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., New York, 2000]. [Questroyal Fine Arts, New York] sold; to Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., 2002, gift; to Harvard Art Museums, 2018 Notes [1] The painting was first offerd for sale through Kende Galleries at Gimbel Brothers on May 4,1945 as lot 5. The lot was unsold in that sale.

Part of LinkedCulture topics

American Landscape and Coastal Paintings
These works are 19th-century oil paintings depicting natural landscapes and seascapes from the northeastern United States, particularly coastal New England regions and rocky shores.
140 objects from 4 institutions
American Watercolor Landscape Art
These objects are predominantly watercolor and drawing works by American artists depicting natural landscapes, outdoor recreational activities, and coastal or wilderness scenes from the 19th century.
63 objects from 3 institutions