Cropsey, Wyeth, and the American Landscape Tradition

Open Wednesday–Monday. Closed Tuesdays except for special events.

October 4, 2025 – May 31, 2026

Brandywine Museum of Art — Chadds Ford, PA

The Brandywine Museum of Art presents Cropsey, Wyeth, and the American Landscape Tradition, a landmark exhibition centered on the first-ever museum display of a monumental rediscovered masterwork by Hudson River School painter Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900).

At the heart of the exhibition is Autumn in the Ramapo Valley, Erie Railway (1873), an extraordinary canvas measuring nearly 7 feet long. Commissioned in 1873 by Irish-American railroad magnate James McHenry, the painting celebrates both the grandeur of the American landscape and the rise of American industry. The train cutting through the valley references the Erie Railroad, in which McHenry had recently secured a controlling stake — a subtle but powerful statement about progress, expansion, and national identity.

Shortly after its completion, the painting was shipped to England and remained in private British collections for more than 150 years. In 2025, it was acquired by The J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Foundation for American Art, marking its long-awaited return to public view. This exhibition offers the first opportunity for audiences to see the work since 1873.

The Hudson River School and Industry

Beyond Cropsey’s masterwork, the exhibition surveys the 19th-century explosion of American landscape painting and its relationship to industrial expansion. Featured artists include:

• Alfred Thompson Bricher
• Albert Bierstadt
• William Trost Richards
• John Frederick Kensett
• Mary Blood Mellen
• Martin Johnson Heade

These painters helped define a distinctly American vision of nature — dramatic, expansive, and often infused with national optimism. Yet their works also reveal the tension between untouched wilderness and advancing railroads, commerce, and settlement.

From Cropsey to the Wyeths

The exhibition continues beyond the Hudson River School, tracing a line of artistic inheritance into the 20th century. Through key works in the Brandywine Museum and Wyeth Foundation collections, the show explores how American landscape painting evolved through:

• Winslow Homer
• George Bellows
• N.C. Wyeth
• and ultimately Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009)

Archival material from the Wyeth family library reveals a deeper engagement with Hudson River School artists than previously recognized. Andrew Wyeth studied their composition, allegorical themes, and even their treatment of industry within landscape. Selected watercolors and tempera works — including some never before exhibited — demonstrate how that legacy carried forward in subtle but meaningful ways.

The result is not just a historical survey, but a reconsideration of how American landscape painting evolved across generations.

Exhibition Dates

October 4, 2025 – May 31, 2026

For deeper context on the rediscovered Cropsey painting, visitors can explore the exhibition microsite:

https://brandywineathome.org/cropsey/

John Sloan’s Street Theater

Open Wednesday–Monday. Closed Tuesdays except for special events.

January 31, 2026 – May 17, 2026

Strawbridge Family Gallery

Curated by Amanda C. Burdan, Ph.D.

The Brandywine Museum of Art presents John Sloan’s Street Theater, an exhibition exploring the graphic work of John Sloan (1871–1951), a central figure of the Ashcan School. Emerging in the early twentieth century, Sloan and his contemporaries rejected idealized subjects in favor of the realities of modern urban life, particularly in New York City.

Best known for his paintings and etchings of everyday city scenes, Sloan captured sidewalks, rooftops, tenements, shop windows, and neighborhood theaters with both humor and social awareness. While his oil paintings employed loose, modern brushwork, his prints reveal a more intricate approach, using etching to record fleeting gestures, crowd interactions, and private moments glimpsed through open windows.

This exhibition draws from a collection of more than 500 prints donated to the museum by the late Paul Preston Davis, presenting over 50 works that highlight Sloan’s mastery of the medium. The selection underscores his deep interest in human behavior — from children playing in the streets to the rhythms of working-class neighborhoods.

Sloan’s art offers insight into a transformative period in American life. During his lifetime, the city shifted from horse-drawn transportation to automobiles; women’s public roles expanded dramatically; and social norms were reshaped through movements such as suffrage and Prohibition. Through his prints, urban life becomes both stage and subject — a “street theater” unfolding in real time.

Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still Life

March 15, 2026 – June 7, 2026

Open Wednesday–Monday. Closed Tuesdays except for special events.

Curator: Kerry Bickford

Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still Life brings together ten contemporary artists who engage with the long tradition of still life while reframing it for the twenty-first century. Historically a genre associated with technical skill and symbolic meaning, still life has also served as a space for experimentation — a place where artists explore texture, composition, and coded messages about wealth, mortality, and desire.

The exhibition is organized into two thematic sections:

Abundance

This section examines how still life imagery has historically symbolized prosperity and status. The featured contemporary works interrogate systems of wealth, commerce, and exchange — asking how objects signal value and how consumer culture shapes perception. Fruit, fish, flowers, and meat become markers not only of bounty, but of economic power.

Excess

The second section focuses on the environmental and social consequences of overconsumption. Many works incorporate discarded or repurposed materials — bath towels, reclaimed toys, grocery flyers, and other found objects — reflecting on industrial production and waste. These reinterpretations of still life question what remains after abundance tips into excess.

The Brandywine Museum of Art presents John Sloan’s Street Theater, an exhibition exploring the graphic work of John Sloan (1871–1951), a central figure of the Ashcan School. Emerging in the early twentieth century, Sloan and his contemporaries rejected idealized subjects in favor of the realities of modern urban life, particularly in New York City.

Best known for his paintings and etchings of everyday city scenes, Sloan captured sidewalks, rooftops, tenements, shop windows, and neighborhood theaters with both humor and social awareness. While his oil paintings employed loose, modern brushwork, his prints reveal a more intricate approach, using etching to record fleeting gestures, crowd interactions, and private moments glimpsed through open windows.

This exhibition draws from a collection of more than 500 prints donated to the museum by the late Paul Preston Davis, presenting over 50 works that highlight Sloan’s mastery of the medium. The selection underscores his deep interest in human behavior — from children playing in the streets to the rhythms of working-class neighborhoods.

Sloan’s art offers insight into a transformative period in American life. During his lifetime, the city shifted from horse-drawn transportation to automobiles; women’s public roles expanded dramatically; and social norms were reshaped through movements such as suffrage and Prohibition. Through his prints, urban life becomes both stage and subject — a “street theater” unfolding in real time.

Together, the exhibition expands still life beyond decorative tradition, connecting it to urgent contemporary concerns about sustainability, consumption, and economic imbalance. The familiar language of fruit and flowers becomes a lens for examining extraction, production, and responsibility in modern society.

Cropsey, Wyeth, and the American Landscape Tradition

Open Wednesday–Monday. Closed Tuesdays except for special events.

October 4, 2025 – May 31, 2026

Brandywine Museum of Art — Chadds Ford, PA

The Brandywine Museum of Art presents Cropsey, Wyeth, and the American Landscape Tradition, a landmark exhibition centered on the first-ever museum display of a monumental rediscovered masterwork by Hudson River School painter Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900).

At the heart of the exhibition is Autumn in the Ramapo Valley, Erie Railway (1873), an extraordinary canvas measuring nearly seven feet in length. Commissioned in 1873 by Irish-American railroad magnate James McHenry, the painting celebrates both the grandeur of the American landscape and the rise of American industry. The train cutting through the valley references the Erie Railroad, in which McHenry had recently secured a controlling stake — a subtle but powerful statement about progress, expansion, and national identity.

Shortly after its completion, the painting was shipped to England and remained in private British collections for more than 150 years. In 2025, it was acquired by The J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Foundation for American Art, marking its long-awaited return to public view. This exhibition offers the first opportunity for audiences to see the work since 1873.

The Hudson River School and Industry

Beyond Cropsey’s masterwork, the exhibition surveys the 19th-century explosion of American landscape painting and its relationship to industrial expansion. Featured artists include:

• Alfred Thompson Bricher
• Albert Bierstadt
• William Trost Richards
• John Frederick Kensett
• Mary Blood Mellen
• Martin Johnson Heade

These painters helped define a distinctly American vision of nature — dramatic, expansive, and often infused with national optimism. Yet their works also reveal the tension between untouched wilderness and advancing railroads, commerce, and settlement.

From Cropsey to the Wyeths

The exhibition continues beyond the Hudson River School, tracing a line of artistic inheritance into the 20th century. Through key works in the Brandywine Museum and Wyeth Foundation collections, the show explores how American landscape painting evolved through:

• Winslow Homer
• George Bellows
• N.C. Wyeth
• and ultimately Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009)

Archival material from the Wyeth family library reveals a deeper engagement with Hudson River School artists than previously recognized. Andrew Wyeth studied their composition, allegorical themes, and even their treatment of industry within landscape. Selected watercolors and tempera works — including some never before exhibited — demonstrate how that legacy carried forward in subtle but meaningful ways.

The result is not just a historical survey, but a reconsideration of how American landscape painting evolved across generations.

Exhibition Dates

October 4, 2025 – May 31, 2026

For deeper context on the rediscovered Cropsey painting, visitors can explore the exhibition microsite:

https://brandywineathome.org/cropsey/