The Lake of Nemi

Located southeast of Rome in the Alban Hills, the picturesque Lake of Nemi offered the young, newly-married Jasper Cropsey an impressive, time-honored vantage on the Italian countryside. This painting is a reduced version-probably a study, as suggested by the artist's notes inscribed in the upper right-of a larger composition that is now unlocated. The artist and collector James. R. Suydam likely purchased the work in a set of seven studies that he bought directly from Cropsey in 1856 when Cropsey was financing his second trip abroad.