Lake Wawayanda in the northwest corner of New Jersey was the site of the original Camp Wawayanda beginning in 1901. Here is the same lake as it was depicted in a painting by Jasper Francis Cropsey done in 1876. Several people who know the lake suggest that the painting is highly romanticized - painted by Cropsey to befit the dramatic natural aesthetic of the mid-19th century Hudson River School. Notice for instance how high and looming the mountains are in the background here; well, the actual scene has no peaks quite so dramatic. Perhaps there's a convergence here: the Hudson River School painters focused many of their landscape paintings on the Catskill Mountains - dramatic scenes yet rounded "soft" mountains, that blue-green mountain-forest color we all know and love so well. What I like, then, is that the Catskills aesthetic trained its eye on Lake Wawayanda, conceptually tying together this New Jersey site to its future in the mountains to the north.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Lake Wawayanda in 1876
Lake Wawayanda in the northwest corner of New Jersey was the site of the original Camp Wawayanda beginning in 1901. Here is the same lake as it was depicted in a painting by Jasper Francis Cropsey done in 1876. Several people who know the lake suggest that the painting is highly romanticized - painted by Cropsey to befit the dramatic natural aesthetic of the mid-19th century Hudson River School. Notice for instance how high and looming the mountains are in the background here; well, the actual scene has no peaks quite so dramatic. Perhaps there's a convergence here: the Hudson River School painters focused many of their landscape paintings on the Catskill Mountains - dramatic scenes yet rounded "soft" mountains, that blue-green mountain-forest color we all know and love so well. What I like, then, is that the Catskills aesthetic trained its eye on Lake Wawayanda, conceptually tying together this New Jersey site to its future in the mountains to the north.
