By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

As evidenced by the rich history of exhibitions, the Brandywine Museum of Art presents and collects historic and contemporary works of American art, engaging and exciting visitors of all ages through an array of exhibitions and programs. 

Quite often, curating an exhibit at the Museum combines the skills of fact-finding, combing through resources, communicating with colleagues in the art world and collaborating with other art institutions. Occasionally, acquiring a work of art for the purpose of displaying it also involves a generous amount of sleuthing, as seen in its current exhibit, Brandywine’s special exhibition Cropsey, Wyeth, and the American Landscape Tradition, now on view through May 31, 2026.

Included in the exhibit will be the world-wide museum debut of a rediscovered masterpiece not seen in the United States since it was painted over 150 years ago. The seven-foot-wide painting, entitled Autumn in the Ramapo Valley, Erie Railway, is a monumental masterwork by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900), one of the luminaries of the Hudson River School of artists. The painting was commissioned by James McHenry, an Irish-born transatlantic businessman who invested in a number of American railroads, to commemorate his amassing a majority stake in the Erie Railroad. 

On tour

This painting has been hidden away in McHenry’s and other British private collections since being shipped to England in the fall of 1873. Recently acquired by the J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Foundation for American Art, this painting by an American artist of a quintessentially American landscape finds its rightful place on an American museum’s wall for the first time in the painting’s history.

Following the painting’s debut at the Brandywine, it will travel nationally to venues across the United States through 2028.

“We searched for a larger scale masterpiece by Cropsey for over 12 years and had to act decisively to acquire this painting with our initial decision based on a condition report and descriptions of the painting from period newspapers,” said Jeff and Ann Marie Fox. “It is an honor that curators from the Brandywine and other museums concur that it is an extraordinary painting with an equally fascinating story whose return to the United States is being celebrated during the country’s 250th birthday.” 

Their Foundation collection includes exceptional examples of works by significant American artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ranging from Thomas Cole to Georgia O’Keeffe.

Autumn in the Ramapo Valley, Erie Railway is a revelation to historians of American art: a survivor of a moment in which art and industry were entangled in fascinating ways and artists like Cropsey, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederic Church were in competition for new fortunes being spent on imposing paintings of the sources of their wealth,” said Brandywine’s William L. Coleman, Ph.D., the exhibition’s curator and Director of the Wyeth Study Center at the Museum, with a scholarly background in the Hudson River School.

Cropsey’s paintings – which include Autumn on the Hudson and The Old Mill, reflect a deep appreciation for nature and its influence on human existence, which served as a central theme of for Hudson River School artists. Autumn in the Ramapo Valley, Erie Railway — an example of the “great picture” tradition — is the work of a mature artist tackling sublime, autumnal wilderness in dialogue with the booming railroad business, a frequent subject. Commissioned by a British railroad investor with controlling interests in the railway depicted, the painting naturalizes infrastructure and celebrates the feats of engineering that allowed it to cross such rugged terrain. It also illustrates the extent to which international markets existed for American art, even at this early date. 

The work received significant attention from American newspapers at the time Cropsey was painting it before it receded from view into private hands for the intervening 150 years.

This exceptional artwork clarifies the sheer ambition, energy, and expense that were devoted to depicting the natural world in the nineteenth-century United States, a phenomenon in which the Brandywine’s collection is also rich. The fact that its subject matter is a valley on the New Jersey-New York border makes it all the more relevant for dialogue with depictions of similar regional subjects in the collection. 

In addition to Cropsey, landscapes by artists including Alfred Thompson Bricher, Albert Bierstadt, William Trost Richards, John Frederick Kensett, Mary Blood Mellen, and Martin Johnson Heade, among others, are included alongside Brandywine’s presentation of the painting.

The exhibition also continues the story of the landscape tradition with the artists that followed Cropsey. 

Hudson River School

Through key works in the Brandywine and Wyeth Foundation of American Art collections, a clear line of descent traces the further development of American landscape art, via Winslow Homer, George Bellows, and N.C. Wyeth, to an especially rich flowering in the works of Andrew Wyeth. Archival evidence demonstrates the depth of his engagement with the history of landscape art, including specific lessons in composition, allegory, and the aesthetic potential of industry that Andrew Wyeth learned from the Hudson River School. 

Through a variety of works in watercolor and tempera, many of which have never been exhibited before, the story of the rich American landscape tradition continues and intriguing commonalities between the artists of the Hudson River School and Wyeth emerge.

The exhibition will be accompanied by virtual programs and a robust microsite with additional research background on the rediscovered Cropsey. After its debut presentation at the Brandywine, Autumn in the Ramapo Valley, Erie Railway will make a national tour into 2028, with presentations now confirmed at the following institutions: Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis, Tenn., from September 6, 2026–January 10, 2027; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Ky., from February 2027–August 2027; Rockwell Museum, Corning, N.Y., from September 2027–February 2028; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Ga., from March–June 2028; and Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., beginning July 2028.

The Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art is located at 1 Mill Road, Chadds Ford, Pa. To learn more about upcoming exhibitions and programs, visit www.brandywine.org.