Word: vanderlyn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...your Aug. 27 story on the American painter, John Vanderlyn: I certainly should appreciate very much seeing his picture of Ariadne, which "shocked his staid American contemporaries...
NORAIR GHELIBOLIAN Caracas, Venezuela ^f For Painter Vanderlyn's 1815 shocker...
Medal from Napoleon. Vanderlyn befriended his compatriot painter, Washington Allston, when both were visiting Rome. Their brush with the remains of the Renaissance encouraged both young hopefuls to try to paint great pictures instead of settling for good ones. Result: both sprinted too far too soon, and had to sit out their later years. Vanderlyn tasted glory first, when his grandiose Marius Amid the Ruins of Carthage caught Napoleon's eye. "Give the medal to that!" the Emperor ordered; overnight the American became a cynosure at the French court. When Aaron Burr came penniless to France after his trial...
...that was needed to complete Vanderlyn's good fortune was a New York reputation to match the fame he enjoyed in Paris. He returned in 1815, confidently bearing with him the pictures Paris had admired. Among them was the slickest nude yet painted by an American, a solid, polished essay in sensuality, made respectable, he hoped, by its title: Ariadne. But Ariadne shocked his staid American contemporaries, who denounced the picture as an example of European depravity...
...Peppercorn for Rent. Vanderlyn cheerfully produced another string to his bow; he had brought back detailed perspective drawings of Versailles, which he now proposed to work up into an oil panorama. His admirers were so taken by this idea that they raised money to build Manhattan's first art museum building, specifically to house the painting. It was a neoclassic, circular structure, a few steps from City Hall, on ground rented from the city for one peppercorn a year. Vanderlyn's panorama occupied the whole upstairs, his smaller canvases, which he thought finer, were downstairs. Entrance fees were...