Jasper Cropsey’s The Old Homestead, Wyoming Valley is an American landscape painted in the Luminist style with oil on canvas. The painting depicts the view of a valley with gently rolling hills and trees against a background of mountains and a cloudy sky from atop a hill at dusk. The main subjects of the painting are three men baling hay in the center of the foreground. There figures provi

When looking at Cropsey and Constable’s paintings comparatively the most glaring difference in their works is their style. The differences in their styles can be attributed to the time lapse between the creation of these paintings and the fact that Cropsey is from America and Constable from Britain. In The Old Homestead, Wyoming Valley, Cropsey creates a realistic and detail-oriented landscape. His brushstrokes are constrained and the lines of his objects are definite and strong. Meanwhile, Constable’s The Cornfield has broken color and free brushwork that is characteristic of Impressionism. Consequently, the details of the objects in his painting are vague and hard to make out. This difference in style also highlights a difference in the way that each artist creates perspective. Since Cropsey’s painting style is more detail-oriented he is able to create perspective by using less detail for objects further away and more detail for objects that are closer. In contrast, Constable’s style does not allow him to utilize this technique because of the lack of detail throughout his painting. Another difference in these paintings is their utilization of lighting. One of the most important elements of The Old Homestead, Wyoming Valley is its lighting and how it affects the other objects in the painting. In this painting the sun casts a mystical light that touches everything in the landscape. Comparatively, in The Cornfield the light is more or less flat and only seen in the shadows that it casts. It does not create any feeling or used as artistically like it is by Cropsey.

Lighting effects are also evident by the washing out of colors as one looks deeper into the painting. This is most evident in the color of the grass which progresses from bright green in the foreground to a brownish, light green mix in the middle ground. By decreasing the vibrancy of the colors, objects move further away from the viewer. An interesting effect of the sun’s lighting is shown in the color of the clouds that loom over the tops of the mountains. The cloud closest to the viewer is shown with a dark pink hue, while the other clouds further back are shown with lighter pink colorations. These colorful hovering masses greatly contribute to the spatial perspective of the piece. The large cloud hovering over the valley helps to frame the entire scene by providing an upper bound to the sky. Moreover,

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