CHAPTER ONE

DUTCH ART AND THE PAINTERS

Louisa Wood Ruby

One of the earliest "schools" of American painting, the Hudson Valley patroon painters, has often been considered to have derived from seventeenth-century English portraiture. Portraits of English aristo- crats appealed to Dutch as displays of the kind of social status they aspired to in their new country. British mezzotints after original paintings by Sir Godfrey Kneller and others provided the patroon painters with readily available models on which to base their portraits of wealthy Dutch Americans. Unfortunately, this convincing analysis vastly underestimates the influence of Dutch art and taste on the development of these paintings. Frequently overlooked in the discussion of the appeal of British portraiture to Dutch patroons is the fact that English portraiture of the seventeenth century was, in fact, a direct descendant of the Netherlandish portrait tradition. Kneller, the main source for the mez- zotints that flooded , was trained in Amsterdam. Sir Peter Lely was born in Holland, and of course Sir Anthony Van Dyck was from Antwerp. Wealthy Dutch families in New York would have been aware of the Netherlandish tradition through works of art they brought with them from their homeland. Indeed, the first paintings produced in New Amsterdam and early New York were essentially Dutch, since no other tradition existed here at the time. When British mezzotints finally arrived in 17 10, they did indeed appeal to the patroon families, most likely because they were works grounded in the Dutch tradition, then overlaid with elements of British culture and style. They were thus a perfect reflection of who these families had become-Dutchmen whose own culture and tastes were being slowly overwhelmed by their new British government. While the Hudson Valley patroon portraits are generally consid- ered the first indigenous "school" of American portraiture, they were certainly not the earliest portraits produced in this country or even in 28 LOUISA WOOD RUBY

New York.] The earliest painting to be considered a Hudson Valley patroon portrait is dated 17 18, nearly a full century after the first boat of Dutch settlers arrived on the island of Manhattes2 The first Dutch settlers were mostly not very wealthy and did not have theJeisure to have portraits made of themselves. Probably, in the beginning, very few Dutchmen actually brought over any pictures with them from their homeland either; in the 1620s and 30s, they were far more concerned with basic survival. Once things became more settled, in the 1640s and 50s, both things begin to occur. Not only are there existing portraits painted in New Amsterdam from this time, but ships now making the ocean voyage were laden with goods other than just the bare necessi- ties of life. This is not surprising, since inventories from seventeenth- century Dutch households have shown that an unusually large number of people in the Netherlands itself at this time possessed pictures3 The idea of owning pictures was clearly held in high esteem. What pictures came to New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century? Apparently there were quite a few, for there were not enough painters in this country at the time to produce the thirty-nine pictures listed in Nlayor Cornelis Steenwyck's fine house or the sixty-one in the barber- surgeon Jacob De Lange's inventory of 1685 or even the nineteen in Sara Webbers' of 1685 or the seventeen in Maria Van Varick's of 1696.' A landscape by Vincent Adraiaensen, known as Leckerbetien (1595-1675), is mentioned in the will of Hendrick Kip (arrived in

' James Thomas Flexncr first coined this term in his book First Flowers of our Wil- derness: American Painting (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947); 69. There are about one hundred of these portraits in existence. The first boats of Dutch settlers began coming over in 1624, although it is unclear whether any of them originally stayed in Manhattan or if they all traveled on to (pres- ent-day) Albany. Sce Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 37, See also Charles T Gehring, ed., Anna& of .New .Netherland: The Essays of A. 3 R uan Laer (Albany: Institute, 1999). Thc notion of a "painting in every Dutch home" that was fueled by contempo- rary travelers' accounts of the Netherlands, such as John Evelyn or Peter Mundy is not quite accurate. As Julie Hochstrasser has pointed out, in "Imag(in)ing Prosperity: Painting and Material Culture in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Household," .Neder- lands Kunsthisto~chJaarboek 5 1 (2000):195-236, it was not every household that owned works of art, but rather the ones on the wealthier end of the scale. Houses with less tangible property were not inventoried as often and probably were not visited by wealthy seventeenth-century travelers. Kenneth Scott, Gwealog.ica1Datafrom Inuwtories of .New %rk Estates 16661825 (New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1970), 39, 159, 160, 17 1. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 29

New Amsterdam in 1637, dies in 167 l), along with other paintings." A majority of the paintings in these inventories were marine views ("a small sea"), landscapes ("a small country"), battles, still life ("a flower pot") and genre, and most are lost to history, for the only extant pic- tures with long provenances that we know are portraits. A clue as to what happened to these pictures may be found in Pierre Eugene du Simitikre's offering for sale in 1779 "pictures chiefly painted in oils, on boards.. .of those kinds the Dutch settlers brought a great many with their other furniture." He had found them in garrets where they had "been confined as unfashionable when that city was moderni~ed."~Apparently portraits remained fashionable, and may have been saved because they represented revered ancestors. They are also better documented than landscapes, genre pictures and still lives because the sitters have dates and so can be more easily connected to living artists. The portraits that we know were brought over include pendants of Peter Stuyvesant's in-laws, Reverend and Mrs. Lazare Bayard, by an unknown artist (Fig. 1). These were brought over either when Stuyvesant came to New Amsterdam in 1647, or in 1654, when his sister Anna Stuyvesant, who also married a Bayard, came over. She also brought with her a portrait of herself and her husband at their homestead in Alphen, Holland, from 1644, which is a landscape as well. All of these pictures are currently in the New-York Historical Society and are not attributed to any particular arti~t.~The portraits are in the style of early seventeenth-century Dutch portraitists such as Michiel van Mierevelt (1567-164 l), very simply dressed figures in three-quarter length with only minimal hand gestures, making them appear somewhat rigid and static. The landscape with the Bayards is quite similar in style and composition to works by Gerard Donck (fl. 1627-1640), such as his Jan van Hmsbeeck, and Farnib in the National Gallery of Lond~n.~Oloff

' Simon Hart, "How Hendrick Kip bequeathed his Estate," De Halve Maw 37, 3 (6 October 1929): 54. "lexner, 66. ' Unidentified artist, Reverend Lazare Bayard, oil on wood panel, 45 x 33 in., New York Historical Society, inv. no. 1915.5; Unidentified artist, Mrs. Lazare Bayard, oil on wood panel, 45 x 33 in., New York Historical Society, inv. no. 1915.6; Unidenti- fied artist, Bayard Homestead, Alph~n,Holland, oil on wood panel, 34 '12 x 48 in., New York Historical Society, inv. no. 1915.7. All paintings are illustrated on the Historical Society's website. Gerard Donck, Jan van Hensbeeck and Farnih National Gallery of London, oil on panel, 76 x 106.2 cm. inv. no. NG1305. 30 LOUISA WOOD RUBY

Fig. 1. Unidentified Dutch artist, Reverend Lazare Bayard, 1636, oil on wood panel, 45 x 33 in., New-York Historical Society, inv. no. 1915.5. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 3 1

Stevense van Cortlandt brought over a portrait of his mother, Katrien, by Mierevelt, in 1638,' and Domine Johannes Weeckstein of the Dutch Reformed Church in Kingston brought over the portrait of himself by Mathijs Naiveu (1647-1726), a student of Gerard Dou, in 1683." While the lack of provenance for many landscapes, still lives and genre pictures makes it difficult to determine which picture in these genres may have been brought over to America from the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, based on the few portraits and landscapes that are documented, we could venture a guess as to what they were like. Simple, cheaper paintings are what came over at first, not grand pictures by Rembrandt, Ruysdael, or other well-known painters, which were owned by the people who were better situated in Holland and so were not the ones emigrating. Kiliaen , one of the first and most successful of the Dutch patroons, for instance, never set foot on these shores." The number of painters and pictures produced in Holland in the seventeenth century was le,+on. It has been surmised that as many as 200,000 paintings were made for and sold in the mar- ketplace, and as can be imagined, not every painter was of the highest caliber. There were many, many, second- and even third-rate painters producing pictures, and it is most likely many of these that made their way over to New Amsterdam. In my research I have discovered examples of paintings other than portraits that might have been brought over to the New World from Holland, paintings that are now attributed to anonymous painters of either the Dutch or American school whose provenance goes no further back than the mid-twentieth century" It is quite possible that some of

"ichiel van Mierevelt, Katrien van Coltlandt, oil on panel, 43 314 x 33 in., Museum of the City of New York, inv. no. 73.230.2. Illustrated in Jerry E. Paterson, The Cig oJ .New Erk: a History Ill~~stratedfromthe Collections oS the Museum o_l- the Cig oJ .New Erk (New York: Abrams, 1978), n.p. lo Mathijs Naiveu, DomineJohannes Weeckstein, oil on canvas, 27 '14 x 22 3/4 in., New York Historical Society, inv. no. 1950.6. " Kiliaen Van Rensselaer was given the rights to a large tract of land around Albany in the 1630s by the Dutch West India Company and really was the only patroon to make his colony successful, probably as a result of its prime location on both the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. The first Van Rensselaer to come over was Kiliaen's son Jeremias. See Charles T. Gehring, Annals 4 .New Netherland: Privatizing Colonization: The Patroonsh$ oS Rensseluerswik (Albany: New Netherland Institute, 2000). " Very helpful in this regard has been the Frick Art Reference Library's Photoarchive. The Frick has an important collection of photographs oE early American paintings that were taken on photograph campaigns to private homes that Miss Frick and her staff photographer undertook in the 1920s-1960s. 3 2 LOUISA WOOD RUBY these pictures were brought over in the seventeenth century, and so are technically "Dutch", but that the history of their ownership has been lost. On the other hand, they could be examples of early "American" landscapes, still lives and genre pictures, in the sense that they were painted on these shores. Histories of American art never even mention the possibility that such pictures were painted here, because none remain that are documented.13 But it stands to reason that they existed, given the propensity of the Dutch to document their surroundings, and the fact that they continue to appear in New York inventories through the 1750s. In 1750, for example, the sale of Gerardus Duyckinck 11's estate included "prospects, History, Sea Skips and Lands Slaps.. ."14 Take for example, a landscape that belonged to the Augustus Van Cortlandt collection (a good Dutch-American name) in 1946. It shows a view up a village street with gabled houses and figures riding in carts loaded with hay or walking to market. l5 There is no real way to determine if this picture was painted in the Netherlands or in New York. The houses appear Dutch, but then so do those in the drawing of a Dutch Cottage on Beaver Street, New Xrkjom 1679, now in the New York Public Library.16Without identifiable landmarks, there is no way of knowing where this scene was painted. Similarly, a rather unskillfully painted genre scene that was in a private collection in Albany in 1965 could be early American just as much as it could be Dutch." Just because the figures are dressed in Dutch seventeenth-century clothing and appear in a seventeenth-century Dutch cottage interior does not mean the painting is Dutch. At the time, Dutch Americans were wearing the same outfits and building the very same houses as the Dutch in Holland. In fact, it really makes no difference if these pictures were painted here or in Europe, because the

l3 Wayne Craven, Colonial American Portraiture: the Economiq Religious, Social, Cultural, Philosophical, SciPnCific and Aesthetic Foundations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 97: "Painting, as produced in what had now become New York, would accord- ingly be deprived of.. .landscape, still life and genre.. ." l4 Roderic H. Blackburn and Ruth Piwonka, Remembrance of Pahia: Dutch Arts and Culhtre in Colonial Ammicq 160S1776 (Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1988), 244. l5 Photograph in the Frick Art Reference Library, attributed to the Dutch School, seventeenth century. l6 Illustrated in Gloria Deak, AchtringAmmicq 1497-1899, I1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 19883, fig. 64. " Photograph in the Frick Art Reference Library, attributed to the American School, seventeenth century. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 3 3 traditions were the same at the time. The majority of people living in New Amsterdam were Dutch and they were painting what they knew. There was no local tradition to blend with, they built Dutch homes and Dutch style furniture, ate Dutch food and spoke the Dutch language. The only way to know the nationality of the painter would be if further provenance could be found for the picture. The earliest extant picture other than a portrait that has a docu- mented provenance dating to even the eighteenth century is a still life currently in the house in New York.18 It was listed in the inventory of Pierre van Cortlandt from 1800, which means it was painted earlier than that, most likely at some point late in the eighteenth century. Not surprisingly, the families who brought pictures over were among the first to have their own portraits painted on these shores. These pictures, though technically American, were painted in the style of contemporary Dutch portraiture, the only tradition represented here at the time. There is a portrait of Cornelis Steenwyck in the New-York Historical Society, for instance, that was long thought to be painted in the Netherlands by his brother-in-law, Jan van Goosen, but now is considered to have been painted in this country.'"he artist it is attributed to (with some doubt) is named Henri Couturier. Couturier was a Dutch artist trained in Leiden (at the same time as Gerrit Dou (1613-1675)), who then moved to Delaware in 1660 and to New York after that. The painting shows the mayor of New York in a typically Dutch outfit of the time, a wide square lace collar over a black velvet coat with slashed sleeves, and a black hat. He is shown in three-quarter length in an oval frame in front of' a landscape, with a cityscape of New Amsterdam appearing below the oval in a separately painted cartouche. Besides the depiction of New York, which is probably from a print, it is understandable that the picture was first attributed to an artist, Goosen, who never came to New York, but it is far more likely to have been painted in this country, since there is no evidence beyond family lore that Steenwyck visited Holland as an adult.

" Unidentified artist, Still Llfe, oil on canvas, 25 % x 29 I/+ in., Van Cortlandt Manor Collection. inv. no. VC.58.6a-b. Illustrated in Kathlcen Eagen Johnson, The Lmner's Trade: Sekrt~dColonial and Federal Paintingsfram the Colkchon of the Historic Hudson klley (North Tarrytown, NY: Philipsburg Manor Gallery, 1996), 1 1. '"ttributed to Hendrick Couturier, Cornelius Steenwyck, oil on canvas, 32 '/a x 25 in. New York Historical Society, inv no. 1882.172. 34 LOUISA WOOD RUBY

The picture of Steenwyck was attributed to Couturier because of the similarity of its brushwork and technique to that found in two portraits of Peter Stuyvesant and his son Nicholas now in the New-York Historical So~iety.~OSince Couturier's wife testified in 1663 that he had painted portraits of Peter Stuyvesant and his son Nicolas, all three portraits were tentatively assigned to him. However, the portrait of Nicholas is dated 1666, so the "proof" for the Couturier attribution is called into question." The portrait of Peter Stuyvesant is very much in the style of portraits by such Dutch artists as Michiel van Mierevelt or Gerrit van Honthorst and is particularly reminiscent of their paintings of the Electors of Palatine or the Princes of Oranges. Stuyvesant must have found this style and costume fitting for his role as Director-General of New Amsterdam. He is depicted in half-length, in an oval frame, wearing armor, with an orange scarf draped over his right shoulder, a square white collar, and a small black cap on his head. He looks out at the viewer with a beni

'"Attributed to Henri Couturier, Goriernor Peter Stuyuesant, oil on canvas, 22 % x 17 '/2, inv. no. 1909.2; Nicholas b'illiam Stuyriesant, oil on canvas, 35 x 25 '/1: in., inv. no. 1905.292. 21 Flexner, 289-90. 22 Annette Stott, Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1998j. '"Thomas B. Clarke's collection, that ended up in the National Gallery, Washington, was particularly egregious in this way The so-called Fredm~ckPhilipse and Olof Stephanse uan Cortlandt are now in the National Gallery as Unknown eighteenth century, Portrait of a Man, oil on canvas, 28 j/u x 23 % in. 1947.17.33 and Unknown seventeenth century, Portrait of a Alan, oil on canvas, 28 '/2 x 23 in., inv. no. 1947.1 7.34. Illustrated in National Gallery of Art, European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue (Washington, DC: 'The Gallery, 1985), 410 and 407. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 3 5 to a man who according to seventeenth-century records never seems to have painted: Jacob Gerritsen Strycker (1651-1687).24These portraits were allegedly of himself and his brother Jan (Fig. 2), but no records of his artistic activity can be found before some family papers that were written up in 1887.2%1 of these paintings are now assigned to unknown artists from the seventeenth- and eighteenth centuries, and because of unreliable information, are considered to portray unidenti- fied sitters. Although these portraits have been brought down to the level of anonymous sitters by anonymous artists, they are not insignificant for the early history of art in America, for they do represent the kinds of portraiture being produced in New Amsterdam in the 1600s. This is especially true of the so-called Stryckers and Oloff Van Cortlandt, which were probably painted in the seventeenth century and could have been produced here. It is also not unlikely that Oloff Van Cortlandt had his portrait painted. The Strycker portraits are earlier, probably from the 1650s, and are based on the simple Dutch portrait tradition such as represented by the Bayard or Mierevelt portraits mentioned above that the artist could have seen in New Amsterdam. The figures are shown bust-length, with simple, unadorned (even unkempt) hair, simple col- lars and black garments. The Van Cortlandt portrait, as evidenced by the costume, is from a later date, when Dutch fashion had begun to be influenced by the French. The man is three-quarter length, with a long wig and a cravat instead of the simple square collar, and a red cloth draped around his chest. How did the artist learn of these new traditions? Besides seeing fashion changing in New York, could he have known later Dutch portraiture? While it is fairly widely known that the portraits of the Bayards, Katrien van Cortlandt and the others I've mentioned came over to New Arnsterdam/New York in the seventeenth century, it is not generally well known that two portraits by Michiel van Musscher of members

24 Formerly Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 41.33. illustrated in Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Pair~tir~gs,a Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 1 (Greenwich, Ct.: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1965), 281. Dutch seventeenth century, Portrait of a Man. oil on canvas, 21 '/2 x 16 % in., National Gallery of Art, inv. no. 1947.17.98. Illustrated in National Gallery of Art, European Pair~tir~gs, 142. " A history of this can be found on the Photoarchive mounts of these paintings in the Frick Art Reference Library

DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 3 7

of the De Peyster family also came over, probably in 1684 (Fig. 3).'" These are of a different caliber than the other paintings we have been discussing, representing a much more sophisticated trend in Dutch portraiture from later in the century. Rather than going back to simple Dutch portraits from early in the century like those of the Bayards and the Mierevelt, the Musschers are in the tradition as practiced by well-known later artists such as Gerard Terborch and Frans van Miens. They show a man, wearing a long wig, with frilly cravat and sleeves emerging from a purplish long coat lined along the chest in red, with his left arm on a table that is covered by an oriental carpet. The woman is wearing a sumptuous dress with a similarly frilly and quite revealing neckline, with slashed sleeves and showing a white undergarment, with her arms around a young girl similarly dressed and holding fruit. Both have landscapes in the background. Originally, it was thought that these portraits represented Abraham de Peyster (1657-1 728), who held a string of prominent positions in New York, including Alderman, Mayor, Acting Governor and Justice of the Supreme Court, and his wife, Katrina. With his wealth of genealogi- cal knowledge, however, Waldron Phoenix Belknap clarified the fact that Abraham and Katrina were not married until 1684, a year after the pictures were painted (they are dated 1683), and that therefore the child in the picture could not be theirs. He surmised that the pictures are actually of Katrina's father, Pierre de Peyster and his second wife, Petronella van Kesteren, Katrina's stepmother, and that the child in the picture most likely represented one of her half-sisters, born in 1675 and 1677. When Abraham went to Holland to bring Katrina back as his bride, she must have brought the portraits with her to remember her father and stepmother by. Most likely, they hung in the "grote kamer" of their home on Pearl St., where Katrina became "widely known as a hostess" to the elite governing body of New York." With such a prominent position, they would have been seen by many of the important people of the day.

'h Michiel van Musscher, Rirre dc Pqstcr, oil on cawas, 23 x 20 '/4 in.; Petronella de Pqster. oil 011 canvas. 23 x 20 '14 x in., the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of New York, no inv. nos. Published in Waldron Phoenix Belknap, American Colonial Painting: ..Zfat~rialsJora History (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1959), 38-9. Extensive 110tes 011 the sitters from Belknap on the Photoarchive mounts of the Frick Art Reference Library " Brlknap, 38.

DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 39

Did these pictures have an impact on the subsequent production of paintings in New York? First, as was the case with other families who brought portraits with them from the Netherlands, these pictures inspired members of the De Peyster family to have their portraits painted. Abraham, in fact, did have his portrait painted (Fig. 4), as did his brother Isaac, probably around 1700.28In 1718, 111, Abraham and Isaac's nephew, was one of the first to have a portrait painted by one of the so-called Hudson Valley patroon painters, using a mezzotint after an English portrait as a source of pose, costume and backdrop (Figs. 5 and 6).'Would this be a coincidence? The New York artists who were available to paint Abraham's gen- eration were not able to produce portraits on the same level as the Musschers. In his portrait, Abraham has the long-haired wig and cravat, signs of status, but the technique is quite coarse and the painting has none of the complexity and interest of the Musschers." The portrait of Isaac, by an unknown artist, has intricate patterning on the coat and in the lace, but is quite simply painted overall. Interestingly, the sitter wears no wig. While Johannes de Peyster I11 would have known these painting of his uncles, he would also have been aware of the Musschers that hung in Abraham's house. They were in the latest Dutch style, smoothly painted, in the elegant, sophisticated clothes based on the French- influenced styles,of the late seventeenth century. When he moved to Albany from New York in 17 13, Johannes married into a prominent Dutch family, the Schuylers (who also collected paintings), and began a successful career that led to his election to several prominent posi- tions, including mayor. When this ambitious young man wanted his portrait painted, he must have looked back at these wonderful works by Musscher and decided to choose not a local artist like those who painted his uncles, but one who could paint him with the aristocratic bearing of his Dutch ancestors. The obvious choice in Albany was an

Gerrit Duyckinck, Abraham de Pqster, oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in., Museum of the City of New York, inv. no. 59.84.1, gift of Miss Augusta de Peyster; Unidentified art- ist, Isaac de Pqst~r,oil on canvas, 29 '12 x 25 '/+ in., New York Historical Society, inv. no. 1960.55 2q Attributed to Nehemiah Partridge,Johannes de Pqster, 1718, oil on bed ticking. 44 x 38 '/4 in., New York Historical Society, inv. no. 1950.236. Print: Sir John Smith after Sir Godfrey Kneller, SirJohn Perceval, mezzotint, New York Public Library. 30 Thc technique does not sccn~the same to me as that in other portraits by Gerrit Duyckinck, but is attributed to him by the museum.

DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAIhTERS 4 1 42 LOUISA WOOD RUBY

itinerant artist from New England, who also passed through New York and Virginia, named Nehemiah Partridge.31 Partridge's work was sophisticated because he based it on British mezzotints of aristocratic English sitters. In De Peyster's portrait, he used a mezzotint after Kneller's portrait of Sir John Perceval, copying the exact pose right down to the finger position, painting a similar land- scape, a similar jacket and a similar swag.32He has, however, changed the cravat and made the face simpler and sharper in the process. De Peyster's mouth is smiling and not pursed like Perceval's, his pose is less twisted, and as a result, he appears more open and approachable to the viewer. This is reinforced by the fact that De Peyster's body is cut off at the thighs, so his body is closer to the picture plane. Other New York portraits by Partridge include two fantastic full- length portraits of Ariaantje Coeymans and in Albany (Fig. 7).33She was a rich Dutch-American heiress who married for the first time at age 51, when this picture was painted. She stands in a full length gown embroidered at the bottom, with a simple necklace of corn kernels and similar earrings, her hair tied back primly, right hand across her waist and pink flower in her left hand. This is the first known full-length portrait of a woman painted in this country. Pieter Schuyler was a founding bther of the Albany area, and was possibly the one who discovered Partridge in Boston and brought him back to paint in Albany.34He sports a long wig and cravat, a red coat with waistcoat and breeches, a black hat under his left arm and one gloved hand holding the glove of the opposite, pointing hand. For the backgrounds of both pictures, Partridge used a mezzotint by G. Beckett after Kneller's Lady Bu~knell.~~ These are a few of the many portraits by Partridge that he based on English mezzotints. Always, however, he simplified his printed sources, making them less pretentious and giving them a more straightforward,

31 Mary Black, "Early Colonial Painting of the New York Province", in Blackburn and Piwonka, Remembrance of Patria, 236. " Belknap owned the painting of Johannes de Peyster, and his was the first portrait to be connected to a British mezzotint. Belknap, 285. " Nehemiah Partridge: Ariaan+ Coymans, oil on canvas. 7 1 x 39, Albany Institute of History and Art, inv. no. 1940.665.1; Peter Schuyler, oil on canvas, 87 3/4 x 51, Collec- tion of the City of Albany, Office of the Mayor. Illustrated in Black, "Early Colonial Painting," 218 and 219. 3+ Black. "Early Colonial Painting,'' 209-210. -'". Beckett after Sir Godfrey Knellrr, The Lady Burknell, mezzotint. Illustratrd in Blackburn and Piwonka. 249. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAIPIPTERS 43

Fig. 7. Nehemiah Partridge (attrib.), Anixntje Coeymans (Mrs. David) Vuplunck (1672-1743), 17 18, oil on canvas, 71 x 39 in., Albany Institute of History & Art, inv. no. 1938.5, bequest of Miss Gertrude Watson. 44 LOUISA WOOD RUBY open appearance. While this very well may have been a result of his inferior artistic skills, it may also to some degree reflect the natures of his sitters, who had grown up in a more primitive land with less sophisticated social strata and mores. What was the appeal of British portraits to Dutch patroons such as De Peyster, Coeymans and Schuyler? One aspect certainly was that they showed landed English aristocracy with social status that the newly minted patroons apparently aspired to. As mentioned, Johannes de Peyster I11 ambitiously married into a prominent Albany family and held several government offices. Ariaantje Coeymans was the daughter of a large landowner around Albany, and thus could be considered a kind of colonial aristocrat. And the social and political position of Pieter Schuyler is well documented. To this group of high-level Dutch Americans, contact with and understanding of the English was a neces- sity. In order to succeed in the British-dominated government, they had themselves portrayed in the manner of English lords and ladies as depicted by Kneller and others. Another, very significant aspect of the appeal of British portraiture to Dutch patroons that is consistently overlooked: English portrai- ture of the seventeenth century was almost inextricably linked to the Dutch, or at least the Netherlandish, portrait tradition. First, it was strongly conditioned by a most important factor-Van Dyck: "Indeed the impact of Van Dyck's stay in England was to be, in artistic terms, as revolutionary as the era of political upheaval which it preceded.. . . The achievements of Van Dyck remained above all those which, for the rest of the century, painters would both strive to emulate and judge themselves against."36 Sir Peter Lely, who succeeded Van Dyck in the fashionable world of English portraiture, was Dutch and traveled back and forth freely between the two countries during his life.37Sir Godfrey Kneller, whose portraits were copied the most in the prints that came to New York, trained in Holland, probably under Ferdinand Bol and a bit under Rembrandt himself.38Even the more conservative British school of portraiture was influenced by the Dutch; Cornelis Johnson

36 Brian Allen, Richard Charlton-Jones, et al., The British Portrait, 166e1960 (Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1991), 76. 3' Ellis Waterhouse, Painhrg in Britain, 1.530 to 1790 (London and Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1953), 62-67. 38 J. Douglas Stewart, Sir Godjq Kneller and the English Baroque Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 2. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 45

(15931664), its greatest practitioner, was of Dutch descent, lived in a Dutch community in London, probably trained under a Dutch master, and eventually left for Holland in 1643. You cannot really separate English portraiture from Dutch portraiture at the time, and Dutch New Yorkers such as the De Peysters would have seen little difference between the portraits of their ancestors by Musscher and the portraits of English lords and ladies being sent over in the form of prints. When British prints arrived in New York, they did not arrive in a vacuum. As outlined, there were many Dutch paintings in New York in the seven- teenth century. When the prints arrived, they appealed as updated versions of the Dutch style the patroons were accustomed to, not as new revelations to an untutored clientele. There are a multitude of interlocking reasons why the Dutch contri- butions to these patroon portraits has been overlooked in the history of American art. First, and most importantly, historians of American art generally have had the same training in American history as American historians. This unfortunately includes a tendency to ignore any Dutch contributions to American culture. As Joyce Goodfriend put it so aptly: "chroniclers of the American past.. .placed their imprimatur on a ver- sion of national origins centered on the English Settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts Bayn3' There is a regrettable propensity in art history to unite New York with the entire Atlantic coast as "the American colonies" and ignore any historical differences between these many areas." This pre-existing prejudice was compounded by the significant discovery by Waldron Phoenix Belknap that the sources for many mid eighteenth-century American portraits were British mezzotints. 41 Many of these painters, such as Smibert and Copley, are quite significant in the development of American painting, and so the fact that many of the earlier, less significant Hudson Valley patroon painters used them, too, generally allowed all the "colonial painters" to be discussed together as being dependent on British sources. To make distinguishing the original contributions of the Hudson Valley patroon painters even more difficult, the names and identities of

" Joyce Goodfriend, ed., Rmiriting New uKetherland: Perspectiver on Ear& Dutch America (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 3. 'O Deborah I. Prosser, "Visual Persuasion: Portraits and Identity among Colonial American Artists and Patrons, 1700-1 776" (PhD diss., Univrrsity of Prnnsylvania, 1997); 161-165. '' Belknap, 27 1-329. 46 LOUISA WOOD RUBY the painters of the Dutch in New York are actually very little known outside a very small group of art historians. Historically, they were known by the names of the sitters they painted, and so were referred to as the "Beekman Limnern or the "De Peyster Limnern. The art historian whose work clarified the different identities and artistic per- sonalities of the Hudson Valley patroon painters was Mary Black, who semed as Director of both the Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Museunl in Williamsburg and the Museum of American Folk Art in New York before she became Curator at the New-York Historical Society. However, while most of her work was published in one form or another, she died before she was able to curate a planned exhibition of these artists which would have clearly shown the differences between their hands and defined their identities to future art historians. As it stands, there is no one publication where all the works by each artist are clearly illus- trated, so it is difficult to get a full sense of any one of them.42Once one does, however, it becomes clear that while certain of the patroon painters are almost completely beholden to British precedents, others were either never exposed to them or chose to ignore them. The artists who fall into these latter categories retained much of the characteristics of Dutch art and culture. It is often wrongly assumed, for instance, that Gerrit Duyckinck (166Ck 1710), one of the first of the patroon painters, used mezzotints for sources, when in fact there is not one painting attributed to him that shows this." His paintings, such as the pendant portraits of himself and his wife, or those of Mr. and Mrs. David Provoost (Fig. 8), are simplified versions of the Dutch models he could have known in this country, portraits brought over with some of the original settlers such as those of the Bayards or Katrien Van Cortlandt discussed above.44 Only the long wigs worn by the men indicate their date later in the century. Gerrit apparently has been confused with both his son and his nephew, who started using British mezzotints for their paintings in the

+'The most comprehensive of her publications is Black, "Early Colonial Painting", but even in this publication, thr paintings by each artist are not illustrated together. 43 See for example: Ann Lenard, "Influences in Early Dutch-American Painting," in The Dutrh and America (Los Angeles: University of California, 1982), 37-40; Prosser, and Robin Simon, The Portrait in Britain and An~erlca: with a Biographical Drtiona7y of Portrait Painters, 11780-1911(Oxford: Phaidon, 1987), 22. 44 Gerrit Duyckinck, Selfportrait of Gerrit Duyckinck, Mrs. Gerrit hyckinck, Mr David Prouoost, Mrs. David Provoo~t,each: oil on wood panel, 30 x 25, New York Historical Societ).; inv. nos. 1918.1; 1918.6 1924.4; 1924.10. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 47

Fig. 8. Gerrit Duyckinck (attrib.), Mrs. Dauid Provoost, ca. 1700-1710, oil on wood panel, 30 x 25 in., New-York Historical Society, inv. no. 1924.10. 48 LOUISA WOOD RUBY

17 10s. There is, in fact, no evidence that these mezzotints came to this country any earlier than about 17 10, the year Gerrit died.45 Gerrit's son and nephew, Gerardus I and Evert 111 Duyckinck, were two of the most popular portrait painters in New York City in the and 30s and did make extensive use of British mezzotint sources in their portraits. The painting style of Gerardus I (1 695-1 746) was positively identified when a religious painting was found to contain his signature and the date 17 13." Although there has been no positive identifica- tion of a print used for this painting, it was probably based on a print after an Italian painting of the Birth of the Virgm. Many similar small religious paintings from colonial Dutch artists were copied from prints in Dutch Bibles, but this particular subject is not included in the Dutch version of the Bible.47From this painting, identifications of other works by Gerardus were made by Mary Black, such as a portrait of Elizabeth Van Rensselaer, who happened to be Gerardus' sister-in-law4' An excep- tional portrait of Mrs. Petrus Vas now in the Albany Institute (Fig. 9), was long thought to be by Pieter Vanderlyn, her son-in-law, but now because of the technique and Mary Black's discovery of familial and geographic connections between the sitter and Gerardus, the latter's authorship has been ~onfirmed.~'Apparently, the mistake was made because documents show that Pieter Vanderlyn painted a portrait of Mrs. Vas' husband, Domine Petrus Vas, that has been destroyed. The heirs then assumed that the portrait of his wife was a pendant portrait by the same artist. Gerardus Duyclunck's authorship is confirmed by the inscription, which closely resembles his signature on the Birth of the Mrgzn, and the style. Further connections include the fact that he lived the end of his life in Kingston, and was buried in the Dutch Reformed churchyard there, where Petrus Vas was Domine.

'"raven, 127, discusses English Governors bringing prints over in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, as does Prosser, 161. 46 The painting was found in 1978 by the Chicago art dealer Richard H. Love, according to Black, "Early Colonial Painting," 243, with illustration. +'For more on these religious paintings, see Ruth Piwonka, ,4 Remnant in the Mldmness: New Yb7k Dutch Sc@ture History Paintings aj' the Earb Eighteenth Century (Albany: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1980). Attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck, Elizabeth Van Rmsselaer, oil on canvas, 45 '12 x 36 3/n in., New York Historical Society, inv. no. 1924.5, illustrated in Black, "Early Colonial Painting," 25 1. 49 Gerard Duyckinck, Mrs. Petrus ks, oil on canvas, 45 '14 x 36 '12 in., Albany Institute of History and Art, inv. no. 1957.104. Discussion in Black, "Early Colonial Painting," 216. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 49

Fig. 9. Gerardus Duyckinck I (attrib.), Elsie Rutgers Schuyler (Mrs. Petw) Vas, 1723, oil on canvas, 44 x 35 in., Albany Institute of History & Art, inv. no. 1957.104, gift of Dorothy Trent Arnold (Mrs. Ledyard, Jr.) Cogswell. 50 LOUISA WOOD RUBY

Gerardus is also the author of pendant portraits of Moses Levy and his wife, and Jacob Franks and his wife, respectively, in the Museum of the City of New York and the American Jewish Historical Society5' Mrs. Franks is based almost line for line on a print by John Smith after Sir Godfrey Kneller. For one of his three paintings of the younger cousins of Johannes de Peyster 111, that of James de Peyster (for these three pic- tures he was known as the "De Peyster Limner" before his identity was discovered), Gerardus worked from a mezzotint by Smith after Kneller of Lord Buckhurst and La& Mary Sackoille. For this painting he used only the figure of the little boy, carefully excising Lady Sackville, but includ- ing the deer Lord Buckhurst is petting.51Another portrait of a child by Gerardus, the Wilhelmina Ritzema in the New-York Historical Society, has no known print source. The headgear that she wears is actually a Dutch item of clothing put on children to serve as a bumper, and the ginger cookie she holds is a purely Dutch food itern. So even though Gerardus was often using prints as sources, he was capable of tailoring his paintings to the desires of his clients, and perhaps also beginning to look around his world and paint actual observations."" Gerardus' cousin, Evert I11 Duyckinck (c. 1677-1 727) was born in Holland, as his father had briefly left New York and gone back to Holland as a mate on a ship.53He became a freeman in New York in 1698, as a limner, after his parents returned to New York, where his father died. His mother remarried and his two half-sisters married into the Beekman family, a prominent upstate New York patroon family. Through this connection, he painted several portraits of the Beekman family. In fact, before he was positively identified, he was known as "The Beekman Limner".54 's portrait is based on Smith's print after Kneller of Lord Torrington, particularly in the

50 Attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck, Moses Leq ,21rs. Moses Levy, both: oil on canvas, 43 '/4 x 34 3/4 in. h,fuseum of the City of New York, inv. nos. 36.343.1 and 36.343.2; hi% Jacob Franks, Mrs. Jacob Franks, both: oil on canvas, 44 x 35 in.; American Jewish Historical Society, no inv. nos. Illus. in Richard Brilliant, Facing the Nezrl World: Jewish Portraits in Colorzial and Federal America (New York: Prestel, 1997), 27-29. "' Attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck, De Pgster Boy with Deer, New York Historical Society, oil on canvas, 50 '14 x 41 in., John Smith after Sir Godfrey Kneller, LordBucMzurst and Lngv .L1ary Sackzille, mezzotint, illustrated in Belknap, XLI, fig. 50. j' j' Attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck, Wilhelmirzcl Ritzema, oil on linen, 32 x 25 in., New York Historical Society, inv. no. 1974.22. See Mary Black, "Remembrances of the Dutch Homeland in Early New York Provincial Painting,'' in Aiw World Dutch Sturlies: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial Ame~ica160F1776. 115. Ibid., 125. j4 Black, "Early Colonial Painting.l 233. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 5 1 pose, but without the background and with the addition of the book, perhaps a Bible, under his hand. The New-York Historical Society owns two particularly charming portraits of Evert's half-nieces Cornelia and Magdelena." Both girls wear pearl necklaces, and Cornelia even wears a pearl earring of the type found in many Dutch portraits of the seventeenth century. Both have the long, attenuated faces that are characteristic of the style of Evert I11 that can be seen in his portraits of his first cousin Catherine Van Zandt and her husband in the same museum." Mrs. Van Zandt holds up a tulip in her right hand, a par- ticularly beautiful one that in Holland at the time could have been worth $100, or enough to keep a laborer and his family clothed and fed for a few months."' Its inclusion clearly is a reference to the lady's extreme wealth, but also to her Dutch heritage as well. John Watson was a Scottish immigrant who painted in New York City in the 1720s. Originally he was a house and sign painter, and eventually made many portraits of the Van Rensselaer family. For this he was for a long time known as the "Van Rensselaer Limner". His portrait of Mrs. Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, the wife of the 3rd Lord of the Manor, from 1725, is based on the print after Kneller's portrait of the beautiful Sarah, Duchess of Marlboro, but is a much rougher, simpler and less attractive version. Watson did not understand, or at any rate did not portray, the expression of the leisurely British aristocrat. Instead, he painted a solid, rather unattractive, heavily jowled woman with dark eyebrows whose hand floats without purpose beside her neck.58 It is probably a much truer likeness of this Dutch American whose life, although privileged, was most likely much more difficult here in the wilderness than was that of the model for her portrait.'g

'"Evert Duyckinck 111, Colonel Gerardu Beebnan, oil on linen, 30 '/t3 x 25 in.; Magdelenu Beekman, oil on linen, 3 1 x 25 in.; Cornelia Beekman, oil on linen, 3 1 x 26, New York Historical Society, inv. nos. 1978.59; 1974.61; 1975.35. '"ttributed to Evert Duyckinck 111, hfr and Mrs. FWynant Van xandt, oil on canvas 44 x 34 in. each; New York Historical Society, inv. nos. 1943.69 and 1943.70. Although the New York Historical Society calls these John Heaton, a comparison of their long, attenuated faces with those in other works by Duyckinck leads me to accept Mary Black's attribution made in "Early Colonial Painting," 240. j7 Even after the crash of the "tulip mania" in Holland in 1637, tulips remained very popular and commandrd high prices such as this. "'Attributed to John Watson, Mrs. Kiliaen Tian Rm~selaer, 1725, oil on canvas, 50 x 41 '/? in., New York Historical Society, inv. no. 1950.242.John Simon after Sir Godfrey Kneller, Duchess OJ Marlborough, mezzotint. Both illustrated in Belknap, xxxiv. " Craven, 137. 52 LOUISA WOOD RUBY

From these examples of three New York City patroon painters, the two Duyckinck cousins and John Watson, we see that despite their basic dependence on prints after English sources, they often included some kind of observed element, such as the headgear of the child, the tulip of Mrs. Van Zandt, or the plain, care-lined face of Mrs. Van Rensselaer. In fact, none of the portraits that are based on the prints replicate them exactly. It is interesting that the added elements identify the sitters as having Dutch heritage. Clearly they did not want to emulate the British to the exclusion of their own culture. Instead, these elements declare it. These elements also add a sense of realism to these pictures that removes them from the ideal. as well as from the pretensions of British aristocrats. These portraits show simpler people, Dutch people, who had fought to create their own republic, not heredi- tary landowners with royal bloodlines. It was these people and their portraits who helped define what is now considered to be the unique American character." All of these New York painters, especially the Duyrkincks, used European modeling and glazing techniques. These techniques were not known upri~reraround Albany by the painters who worked there after Nehemiah Partridge. The later painters in Albany painted with a "decorative naivete" that would not have been acceptable in New Y~rk.~'In fact, this naivete, which others have observed, stems not only from the technique of the Albany painters, but also from the previously unobserved fact that they rarely, if ever, used British mezzotints as sources. This observation has escaped notice because Mary Black's work at distinguishing the works of the painters from one another and giving them identities has not been fully integrated into the literat~re.~' Pieter Vanderlyn, one of the main Albany painters in the 1730s and 40s, was born in the Netherlands, moved to Kingston in 1722 from Curacao, and married Gertrude Vas, the daughter of Petrus Vas, the Domine of the Dutch Reformed Church, and his wife (Fig. 9). He has a flat, decorative, naive style that can be seen in paintings such as his

"'Ibid., 138. " See Richard H. Saunders, American Colonial Portraits, 170&1776 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Portrait Gallery, r. 1987), 5. '' Further work needs to be done on many of the paintings to confirm much of Mary Black's work. It is dificult to say why this has not been done-perhaps because it is such a small area of expertise, with paintings that are generally considered to be "naive". It is, however, a ripe area tbr research and publication, and would benefit greatly from the kind of exhibition that she had been planning. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 53 portraits of the Gansevoorts now in a private c~llection.~'Behind Mr. Gansevoort is a naturalistically painted landscape with geese (Gans in Dutch) in a pond, and behind Mrs. Gansevoort is a ford (Voort in Dutch). Thus the painter has cleverly designed a rebus of the sitters' last name.64The landscape behind Mrs. Gansevoort is almost identical to that in another picture by Vanderlyn, a portrait of their son, Harme Gansevoort, indicating it is probably from a print, most likely a Flemish landscape.'"n the portrait of Pau de Wandelaer in the Albany Institute, however, Vanderlyn painted the first landscape based on his actual sur- roundings. The picture shows the with the Catskills in the background, and a Dutch sloop flying the British Union Jack; there is an American Goldfinch in the sitter's hand (Fig. The clothing of these Albany folk is simple and unadorned broadcloth, and they are wearing their hair naturally, with no wigs. This undoubtedly reflects local tradition, and certainly did not come from British prints. Another Albany artist who appears not to have used prints as sources is John Heaten, an artist of uncertain nationality, who married a Dutch woman. He painted in a consistent and limited format, using a direct painting technique and no glazing or modeling.b7 In his portrait of Abraham Wendell, he painted a naturalistic view of Wendell's farm in the background, complete with gristmill and a Dutch "boat wagon", so known because of its shape, behind him.68 Together with Pieter Vanderlyn, Heaten pioneered the great American landscape tradition. In fact, Heaten almost certainly painted an overmantle of the Van Bergen farm west of Catskill now in the Fenimore Art Museum. In Heaten's wonderful portrait of Magdalena Douw in Wnterthur, the sitter wears a local version of fashionable dress, complete with a traditional Dutch

6"ttributed to Pieter Vanderlyn, Lemdert Ganseuoort, oil on canvas, 47 '/2 x 35 'h in.; Catanna Gansmoort, oil on canvas, 47 '12 x 35 '12 in. Illustrated in Black, "Early Colonial Painting," 226-227. 64 Alice P. Kenney, Th Gammoorts ~Albanv:Dutrh Patnrians in the UwHudson Valley (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969), 41. " Reter Vanderlyn, Harme Gansmoort, Hirschl and Adler Gallery New York, 1990. Illustrated in Antiques, 137, 2 (19 February 1990): 375. bb Attributed to Pieter Vanderlyn, Pau de Ilhnddaer, oil on canvas, 44 3/4 x 35 '/4 in., Albany Institute of History and Art, in. no. 1940.600.28. Black, "Early Colonial Painting," 235. "' Saunders, 5. " John Heaten, Abraham Wendell, oil on canvas. 35 '12 x 29 '/n in., Albany Institute of History and Art, inv. no. 1963.47. Illustrated in Black, "Early Colonial Painting," 224. 54 LOUISA WOOD RUBY

Fig. 10. Pieter Vanderlyn (attrib.), Pau Gansevomt, formerly known as Pau de Wandeh, ca. 1730-1 740, oil on canvas, 44 % x 35 I/+ in., Albany Institute of History & Art, inv. no. 1940.600.28, gift of Catherine Gansevoort (Mrs. Abraham) Lansing. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 55 choker on her neck.('' The rounded arches through which the Catskills appear were based on illustrations in Dutch Bibles that came to the Hudson Valley around 1700.70 Illustrated Dutch Bibles were a main source for many religious paint- ings produced in the Albany area in the first half of the eighteenth century. Possibly because they do not fit in neatly with the British predilection for portraits, or because of their repetitive nature, these paintings are often left out of histories of American art.71They were, however, a major source of decoration for Dutch Americans living in and around Albany throughout the eighteenth century, and over forty survive to this day Although the Dutch Reformed Church did not allow paintings in churches, it did allow religious paintings in homes. As soon as the Bibles with illustrations based on seventeenth-century Dutch paintings began arriving in New York, artists such as Gerard Duyckinck and others began copying them on canvas. According to Ruth Piwonka, the "Dutch in New York saw themselves, like the Biblical Israelites, as a remnant in the wilderness, in danger of losing their cul- ture and their identity as a pe~ple."~'They thus clung tightly to their religion, which the English allowed them to practice in their own native language. They were very well acquainted with the Bible and desired to have scripture paintings in their homes. Almost all inventories of goods belonging to Dutch Americans in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century include Bibles, and many illustrated Bibles from 1702-1 744 from Hudson Valley collections still exist.73 In fact, there were not all that many non-Dutch settlers in Albany, so Dutch culture (in the form of houses, churches, manners, customs, language and art) continued for a much longer period of time. As the Swedish naturalist Peter Kalm said in 1749 when visiting Albany: "The inhabitants of Albany and its environs are almost all Dutchmen. They speak Dutch, have Dutch preachers, and the divine service is

""John Heaten, Vun Bergen Farm, oil on cherry boards, 15 '14 x 87 5/8 in., Fenimore Art Museum, inv. no. N366.54, illustrated in Blackburn and Piwonka, 27; Attributed to John Heaten, Magdalena Douw,oil on canvas, 51 '/]ti x 33 in., Henry Francis du Pont PVinterthur Museum, inv. no. 63.852. illustrated in Black, "Early Colonial Painting,'' 229. See Robert G. Wheeler. "The Albany of Magdalena Douw," Ifinferthur Porfilio 4 (1969): 63-74. "' Kenne); 4 1. " The most extensive work to date has been done by Piuonka, Rrrnnant in the Wilderness. " Ibid., 1 I. j3 SCCScott, Gnealogcal Data. 56 LOUISA WOOD RUBY performed in that language. Their manners are quite Dutch and their sparing manner of living, too."'+ This is undoubtedly why painters such as Vanderlyn and Heaten did not use British mezzotints as sources. Neither these painters nor their solid, middle-class Dutch-American patrons had as much exposure to these prints as their counterparts who traveled and worked in New York or Boston. Even if the Gansevoorts and Wendells did know the British prints, they clearly did not choose to have them emulated. In New York City, the British, and consequently, their prints, had a much stronger influence. There, Dutch houses, lan

74 Peter Kalm, Peter Kalnl's 7iaue0 in ,Corth America: The English Version of 1770 (New York: Wilson-Erikson Inc., 1937). j5 Walter Liedtke, "Dutch Paintings in America: The Collectors and Their Ide- als," in Great Dutch Paintingsfion1 Anmica (The Hague: Mauritshuis; Zwolle: Waanders, 1990), 19. DUTCH ART AND THE HUDSON VALLEY PATROON PAINTERS 57 through the mid-eighteenth centuries. Dutch art in all its forms was the first art to come to New York, and the first art to be produced here. Its influence lasted well into the eighteenth century and through an onslaught of British portraiture, which was in itself an offshoot of the Netherlandish portrait tradition. It was the combination of British and Dutch portraiture reinterpreted by the early settlers that created a uniquely American art form. With continued close study of the extant materials, further discovery of Dutch paintings in New York in the seventeenth century and the sorting out of hands, the true impact on Dutch art and taste on the development of early American painting may one day be accurately assessed.