Hackensack Meadows

Jasper Francis Cropsey

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cropsey was one of only a few Hudson River School artists who painted landscape in watercolor. Although he began to work in the medium as early as 1855, the artist did not paint watercolor landscapes in earnest until the 1880s. One of Cropsey’s favorite subjects, the Hackensack meadows were located within a half-day’s journey of his home in Hasting-on-Hudson, New York. The artist’s point of view in this picture is probably in or near Little Ferry, New Jersey, on the edge of an inlet of the Hackensack River, seen in the middle distance. Today the marshes are usually referred to as the Meadowlands and are the site of landfills, highways, sports arenas, and shopping malls. In the nineteenth century, the spacious wetlands were punctuated by hay and grain farms, pasture, and small brick manufactories such as the one depicted on the river’s edge.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art