A View from Bald Mountain, Orange County, N. Y.

Cropsey practiced architecture but painted in his spare time, exhibiting a landscape painting to favorable reviews at the National of Design, New York, in 1843. This view of Orange County, New York, is one of Cropsey’s earliest known works. Commanding trees and rocks in the foreground are rapidly indicated, while carefully rendered topographical details in the distant landscape reveal greater attention to nature’s complexity and expanse. This drawing provided the basis for an oil painting of 1845, View of Greenwood Lake, New Jersey. Cropsey became a leading artist of the Hudson River school in the 1840s and 1850s.