Kenilworth Castle
Jasper Francis Cropsey
(American, 1823–1900)
June 29, 1849
Medium/TechniqueGraphite and wash with white watercolor on brown paper
DimensionsSheet: 28.6 x 42.1 cm (11 1/4 x 16 9/16 in.)
Credit LineGift of Maxim Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Watercolors and Drawings, 1800–1875
Accession number54.1633
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Nineteenth-century Americans yearned for ruins, but the United States offers very few, so Cropsey found inspiration abroad. Kenilworth Castle loomed especially large in the Anglo-American imagination, as it had long been an important seat of English royal power. Destroyed during the English civil war of the 1640s, it had remained empty ever since, reminder of a lost age of chivalric glory.
