Charles Leupp

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Charles Mortimer Leupp (born October 14, 1807 in New Brunswick , Middlesex County , New Jersey , † October 5, 1859 in Manhattan , New York County , New York ) was an American leather dealer , art collector and patron .

Life

Leupp, born Charles Mortimer Lupp , was the fifth child of William Lupp (1766–1845), a scion of German immigrants, and Margaret Hodge (1771–1861) from New Brunswick. He attended schools in his hometown. At the age of 15 he became an employee of the leather merchant Gideon Lee , who at that time began to embark on a steep political career as a member of the New York State Assembly . Interrupted by military service, which he completed in 1826, he successfully expanded the business of his boss's tannery . This made him his partner within a few years. He also married his daughter, Laura Theresa Lee († 1842), who gave birth to three daughters, Laura Theresa (1838-1908), Isabella (* 1840) and Margaret (* 1842). Part of the heir to his father-in-law, who had represented New York State in the US House of Representatives between 1835 and 1837 , Leupp became a very wealthy man in 1841. He changed the name of the company to Charles M. Leupp & Company . At that time he was one of the leading merchants in Manhattan. On the basis of his fortune, he also worked in banking, so he became a director of Greenwich Savings Bank and Mechanics' Bank . He also served in the management of the New York and New York and Erie Railroad Company .

The Power of Music , painted in 1847 by William Sidney Mount, commissioned for Charles Leupp

In addition to business and family, Leupp was involved in private societies of the educated bourgeoisie, such as The Column , a group of former Columbia University graduates , and the Sketch Club , an association for art and literature enthusiasts, to which his friends William Cullen Bryant , Asher Brown Durand and Francis William Edmonds , and from which the Century Association emerged in 1847 . Furthermore, like Bryant, he was one of the founders and managers of the American Art Union , and from 1843 an honorary member of the National Academy of Design and chairman of the Mechanics' Society . He made particular merits as a supporter of the New York House of Refuge . As an art collector, he was particularly interested in artists from the Hudson River School . His private collection included paintings by Durand, Edmonds, Robert Walter Weir , Emanuel Leutze , Thomas Cole , John Frederick Kensett , William Sidney Mount, and others. Leupp's networking in New York patriciate and artistry as well as his art patronage made him a driving force in the cultural life of New York.

In 1845 Leupp toured Europe and the Middle East with Bryant. In 1849 they traveled to Europe again. Their travels took them to the Rhineland, where in August 1845 they attended the Düsseldorf Art Academy , known at the time for the Düsseldorf School of Painting , in whose milieu a colony of American painters was staying at the time, including Leutze, whom Bryant won as an illustrator of his poems.

In 1856, Leupp and his brother-in-law David Williamson Lee entered into a partnership with businessman Jay Gould . This partnership broke up in the economic crisis of 1857 . While Leupp lost his fortune and became seriously mentally ill, Gould managed to take advantage of the decline of his partners. The disease, which had shown signs of being before Gould's partnership, became so severe that his family eventually considered putting him in an institution. On October 5, 1859, Leupp committed suicide in his palatial home on Madison Avenue and 25th Street by shooting himself in the heart with a shotgun.

Leupp's collection of paintings, one of the most important in the United States, was auctioned off in 1860 at the New York auction house EH Ludlow & Co. A portrait in oil by William Page created before 1843 and a photograph in the possession of the National Portrait Gallery Washington pass on the facial features of Leupp.

literature

  • John H. Gourlie: A Tribute to the Memory of Charles M. Leupp. An Address Delivered before The Column, February 10, 1860 . New York 1860 ( digitized ).
  • James T. Callow: American Art in the Collection of Charles M. Leupp . In: Antiques , 122 (November 1980), pp. 998-1009.
  • Edward J. Renehan Jr .: Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons . Basic Books, New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-465-06885-2 , Chapter 9 ( Google Books ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David B. Dearinger (Ed.): Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of the National Academy of Design . Volume 1: 1826-1925 . Hudson Hills Press, New York 2004, ISBN 1-55595-029-9 , p. 233 ( Google Books )
  2. ^ William Cullen Bryant : Letters of a Traveler; or, Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America . George P. Putnam, New York 1851, p. 234 ff. ( Digitized version )
  3. ^ William Cullen Bryant . In: Karl Ortseifen, Winfried Herget, Holger Lamm (Eds.): Picturesque in the highest degree… Americans on the Rhine. A Section of Travel Accounts . 2nd edition, Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8233-6893-9 , p. 117 ( Google Books )
  4. ^ Charles M. Leupp (painting) , data sheet in the portal si.edu ( Smithsonian Institution )
  5. ^ Charles M. Leupp , data sheet on the browse.americanartcollaborative.org portal
personal data
SURNAME Leupp, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leupp, Charles Mortimer (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American leather dealer, art collector and patron
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH New Brunswick , Middlesex County , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH October 5, 1859
Place of death Manhattan , New York County , New York