John Vanderlyn

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John Vanderlyn (born October 18, 1775 in Kingston , New York Province, † September 23, 1852 ibid) was an American painter .

Self-portrait of Vanderlyn, Paris 1800 ( Metropolitan Museum of Art )

Life

Vanderlyn's grandfather and father were painters. The former, Pieter Vanderlyn (1687–1778) immigrated from Holland to New York and mainly made portraits. His son, Nicholas Vanderlyn (1723–1810), a glass painter, also sold painting supplies. After completing his training at the renowned Kingston Academy , John Vanderlyn took an apprenticeship with Thomas Barrow, the painting teacher and print dealer in New York . From 1792 he took courses at the Columbian Academy for two years . The portrait of his brother Nicholas Vanderlyns, which is considered to be the oldest still preserved, dates from this period, 1793. It is housed in the Senate House State Historic Site in Kingston. In 1794 he met Gilbert Stuart in Barrow's shop and was allowed to move into his studio in Philadelphia .

Thanks to the patronage of Aaron Burr , who discovered him in Stuart's studio, he was initially able to become Stuart's assistant and later to go down in history as the first American painter who was also trained in Paris. Burr and Vanderlyn found that an art suitable for the young American republic was more likely to be learned in revolutionary France than in Great Britain. In Paris, in 1800, Vanderlyn was also the first American to exhibit in the Paris Salon and even to win a prize. So it is not surprising that he is counted among the representatives of French classicism . He studied for two years at the Académie de Peinture of the École des beaux-arts with François-André Vincent . After Burr could no longer pay him maintenance from late 1798 or early 1799 due to a financial bottleneck, Vanderlyn switched to portraying American tourists. B. the politician Elbridge Gerry . He stayed in Paris until 1801.

Aaron Burr suggested Vanderlyn after his return to New York to paint a series with the Niagara Falls as a motif, which he did until 1803. He later made engravings based on these pictures. The cases were still the subject of his work a quarter of a century later, in 1827 and 1837. Vanderlyn was commissioned by the Common Council of New York to portray John Jay , but for political reasons he protected himself from illness. The Yale University Art Gallery has two paintings from 1802. One is a portrait of Aaron Burr, and the other is one of his daughter Theodosia Burr Alston .

Portrait of Aaron Burrs, New York 1802 ( Yale University Art Gallery )
The Death of Jane McCrea , Paris 1804 ( Wadsworth Atheneum )

Edward and Robert R. Livingston wanted to finance Vanderlyn's second trip to Europe. He was supposed to make copies of the old masters as well as plaster casts of ancient sculptures in the collections of Paris, Florence and Rome for a handsome salary for the newly opened New York Academy of Fine Arts . But the Livingstons did not keep this agreement and unilaterally terminated the contract in 1804. During his stay in Paris, Vanderlyn painted a portrait of Robert Livingstone and his first historical painting. Inspired by the poem Joel Barlow's The Columbiad , he created The Death of Jane McCrea (The Death of Jane McCrea). Barlow, whom he knew from his first stay in Paris, had commissioned him, but after the completion Vanderlyn asked a price that was higher than that agreed, which led to a disagreement between the two.

In 1805 Vanderlyn went to Rome for three years, where he now painted copies for other clients. Inspired by the duel between Burr and Alexander Hamilton , another historical painting was created there in 1807 called Marius Amid the Ruins of Carthage . It is now part of the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco . In Rome he received praise for this work, but in Paris in 1808 he received the aforementioned prize from the Paris Salon, the médaille d'encouragement of Napoléon . In Paris he continued copying and portraying, but finished one of the first acts by an American painter with his Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos , considered one of his masterpieces.

In 1814 he began the long-planned project of creating a panorama of the palace and gardens of Versailles . For this he used a camera obscura in order to achieve the most realistic representation possible . So he was able to continue working on it after his return to New York the following year. For the work, which was completed around 1820, he had a special rotunda built in a New York park - visitors could admire the panorama there for an entrance fee. For the rotunda, which he operated privately, he also rented panorama pictures from other painters, for example from Paris, Athens or Geneva, but the business model did not prove to be profitable. Today the painting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a gift from the Kingstons Senate House Association . It was above all the anti-democratic impact associated with Versailles that turned the project into a financial debacle. Nevertheless, he went on tour with him. B. Charleston , New Orleans or Havana . In the rivalry between Vanderlyn and John Trumbull for the position of the leading American history painter, not only two painting schools met, Trumbull made use of the British Grand Style , but also two political attitudes towards one another. While Vanderlyn was close to the Democratic Republican Party , Trumbull supported the federalists . With Trumbull's appointment as President of the American Academy of Fine Arts in 1817 , Vanderlyn lost this competition.

However, in the same year Vanderlyn's masterful portraits earned him the commission of the City of New York for a portrait of President James Monroe . Vanderlyn was also a founding member of the National Academy of Design in 1826 . In 1837 he too had the opportunity to create a history painting for the rotunda of the Capitol: it took him and his assistants ten years to complete the work Landing of Columbus at the Island of Guanahani, West Indies, October 12, 1492 in oil.

plant

The majority of Vanderlyn's works are portraits . History and landscape paintings are less represented . The painting on the landing of Christopher Columbus, created for the rotunda of the Capitol, is considered to be one of the best symbols of the Manifest Destiny , despite Vanderlyn's efforts to achieve realism .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kenneth C. Lindsay, Vanderlyn, John, in: Jane Turner (Ed.), The Dictionary of Art, London and New York 1996, p. 872.
  2. ^ Dell Upton: Inventing the Metropolis: Civilization and Urbanity in Antebellum New York. In: Art and the Empire City. New York, 1825-61. Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2000. p. 38.
  3. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "V" / Vanderlyn, John Founder 1826 ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on June 18, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nationalacademy.org
  4. ↑ a b biography of Vanderlyn on the website worcesterart.org

literature

  • Kenneth Clement Lindsay: The Works of John Vanderlyn, from Tammany to the Capitol. University Art Gallery, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1970.

Web links

Commons : John Vanderlyn  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Vanderlyn, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1775
PLACE OF BIRTH Kingston (City, New York)
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1852
Place of death Kingston (City, New York)