Dawn of Morning, Lake George, 1868

Provenance

The artist
James L. Brumley, acquired from the above, 1868
Edward R. Brumley, by descent from the above, by 1944
Robert McIntyre
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, acquired from the above, 1963
Paul Vignos, Jr., Cleveland, Ohio, acquired from the above, 1965
Hindman Auction, Chicago, Illinois, 6 November 2011, lot 23
Private collection, acquired from the above
Sale, Christie’s, The William I. Koch Collection, New York, January 21, 2026, lot 124

Exhibited

Macbeth Galleries, New York, American Paintings of the Early 19th Century, April 3-22, 1944, no. 9.

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York, Selections from the Collection of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1963-64, no. 9 (as Evening at Lake George).

California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California, The American Scene, June 9-September 16, 1964.

Literature

Macbeth Galleries, American Paintings of the Early 19th Century (Macbeth Galleries, 1944), n.p., no. 9.

Cortissoz, “Paintings and Drawings,” New York Herald Tribune, April 9, 1944, 5. (refers to the Macbeth Galleries exhibition)

Breuning, “Faithful Accounts of Last Century America,” Art Digest, vol. XVIII, no. 14, April 15, 1944, 9 (as Dawn of Morning).

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., Selections from the Collection of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1963-64, (Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1964), n.p., no. 9, illustrated. (as Evening at Lake George).

W.S. Talbot, Jasper F. Cropsey, 1823-1900, (PhD diss.,1977) 440 (as Lake George, Evening).

Kelly, “Dawn of Morning, Lake George,” in T.K. Groft, M.A. Mackay, eds., Albany Institute of History & Art: 200 Years of Collecting (Hudson Hills Press in association with Albany Institute of History & Art, 1998), p. 110 (as Lake George, Evening).

Wilton, T. Barringer, American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820-1880, exhibition catalogue, (Tate Modern, 2002), 142 (as Lake George, Evening).

A.M. Speiser, ed., Jasper Francis Cropsey, Catalogue Raisonné: Works in Oil, Volume Two, 1864-1884, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, 2016, pp. 70-71, no. 929, illustrated.

Related Work

Dawn of Morning, Lake George, 1868, oil on canvas, 20¼ x 32½ inches, signed and dated lower left: J.F. Cropsey / 1868; Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany, New York

Lake George, ca. 1860-70, oil on canvas, 23½ x 37¾ inches, signed lower right: J.F. Cropsey; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

Note

On March 27, 1868, Cropsey sold two paintings for a total of $800, which together represent the beginning and end of a day in the life of a Native American hunter.[1] The companion painting, now held by the Albany Institute of History and Art, is nearly identical in size and also bears the title Dawn of Morning, Lake George. Like other nineteenth-century landscape painters, including Thomas Cole, Cropsey utilized paired or serial compositions to convey layered meaning, using the contrast between sunrise and sunset to structure a visual meditation on time and transformation within the familiar yet spectacular setting of Lake George. Cropsey visited the lake on several occasions, and it was widely celebrated for its “crystalline water and scenic setting,” offering a luminous mirror framed by cliffs and wooded mountains whose rugged contours are perpetually reflected in its clear surface.[2]

[1] W.S. Talbot, Jasper F. Cropsey, 1823-1900, (PhD diss.,1977) 440 (as Lake George, Evening).

[2] F. Kelly, “Dawn of Morning, Lake George,” in T.K. Groft, M.A. Mackay, eds., Albany Institute of History & Art: 200 Years of Collecting (Hudson Hills Press in association with Albany Institute of History & Art , 1998), p. 110 (as Lake George, Evening).