JASPER FRANCIS CROPSEY, Long Beach

According to Dr. Kenneth W. Maddox, “The developer of Long Beach, F. Hopkinson Smith, president of the Long Beach Improvement Company, was working with Cropsey on matters pertaining to the American Water Color Society in March 1882. He obviously extended an invitation to the artist to visit Long Beach, which Cropsey accepted. Ronald G. Pisano (in his book) Long Island Landscape Painting, 1820-1920, quotes an article “Along the South Coast,” which appeared in the New York Times in 1880:  'Up to last year it was a barren island...never visited except by hunters, fisherman, and wreckers.' The Long Beach Improvement Company transformed it into 'an elegant quiet summer resort for New Yorkers…free from crowds of transient visitors that fill up the Coney Island resorts.'