Jacobus Strijcker

The little town of New Amsterdam was from the first a community of art lovers. Even those who could not read remembered the pictures and the public exhibitions at which they were shown, and it is not surprising to find during the brief period of Dutch rule half a dozen painters of more than average excellence. In point of merit the most important of all was Jacobus Strijcker, whose name is more often spelled in Colonial records Strycker and has become, as borne by his many American descendants, Striker. In 1643 the Dutch West India Company issued a grant of land to Jacobus Strycker and his brother Jan Strycker, on condition that they would pay for the transportation of ten colonists. There is no record that they brought over as many as the grant required, but, at any rate, they came with their families. In the light of the most recent investigation it is assumed that the portrait of Peter Stuyvesant in possession of the New York Historical Society is the work of Strycker.The Stuyvesant portrait justifies the statement which most critics will agree to, that Stryker's work is in the finished manner of the Dutch school, and the ablest in seventeenth century New York.

Evert Duyckinck

Even earlier in point of arrival was Evert Duyckinck, who came over in the service of the Dutch West India Company in 1638. Early records characterize him as "limner, painter, and glazier." For one hundred years, and during three generations, four members of the Duyckinck family painted portraits in New York, besides such decorative work as outlining in glass coats of arms and other decorations. Evert Duyckinck's sons were Gerret and Evert 2d. The most authentic example of the work of Evert Duyckinck is the portrait of Governor Walter Stoughton, of Massachusetts. Gerret Duyckinck is remembered by portraits of himself and his wife. To a third Evert Duyckinck are attributed portraits of six members of the Beekman family.

Benjamin West

In 1758 and 1759 the city was honored by the temporary residence of Benjamin West (1738-1820), the first American born painter to attain world celebrity. In that year he devoted himself to portraiture. Perhaps the most striking of his compositions, certainly the one most widely reproduces, is "Death on a Pale Horse," which is appropriately the possession of a Philadelphia Museum, since he was both a Quaker and a Pennsylvanian. In 1753 West began his career, and his portrait of Bishop Prevost is his best work here. During his long career in London, where he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy, it was his delight to render what assistance he could to the oncoming generation of American artists.

Robert Feke

The art of miniature painting speedily followed the close of the Revolutionary War, and at a time when the one outstanding name of a native New Yorker in painting was that of Robert Feke, there were a number of miniaturists at work. Robert Feke was born in what is now Oyster Bay, Long Island, speedily made a reputation as a portrait painter second only to that of Benjamin West. A number of portraits of nearly New Yorkers bear his signature, but the greater part of his work was done and is owned in Philadelphia.

Henry Coutrie (Sieur Henri Couturier)

Still another Dutchman, of Walloon descent, although for a long time he was rated as a Frenchman by the historians of New York art, came over in 1657 or 1658, Hendrick Coutrie, to give the ordinary Dutch version which would be more correctly rendered as the Sieur Henri Couturier. He was a deacon in the Reform Church in which Peter Stuyvesant was elder in 1670, a distinction which no subsequent New York painter has sought. His best known works which are in the possession of the New York Historical Society, are portraits of Oloff Stevense van Cortlandt (1610-84). Frederick Philipse (1626-1702) patroon of Philipsborough. The picture of William Nicholas Stuyvesant (1648-93), son of the Governor, represents him on horseback, and the figure worked is done so badly that it may possibly have been an attempt at humor. In 1663 Mevvrouw Couturier, who had gone into business in a retail line, received a demand from the municipality of New Amsterdam that she purchase her burgher rights. Her defense was that her husband had already received burgher rights, and that in return he had painted portraits of Director-General Stuyvesant and drawn pictures of his sons. As a consequence there was long a disposition to attribute to Couturier the Stuyvesant portrait which is reproduced in this work, and now recognized as from the brush of Jacobus Strycker.

Miscellaneous Early Artists Tid-Bits

The last of the Dutch painters to arrive was Gerret van Ravolst, who is so described in the minute by which he is made a freeman of the city of New York in 1751. Meantime, the English painters were making themselves felt in the New World. In 1754 Richard Clarke Cooke, "limner," was admitted a freeman. Lawrence Kilbrunn was painting in New York from 1754 to 1755. During this early period New York was visited by John Wollaston, who painted a number of portraits while here, but is confused by Dunlap and other authorities with his father, also an English painter of distinction, but who spelled his name Woolaston. Many of the portraits of the Bayards and Beekmans of this early period were the work of Abraham Delanoy.

Matthew Pratt painted some fifty large portraits in New York, which also received professional visits from Malbone. Joseph Wright executed some commissions and was liberally patronized, as was also Gilbert Stuart, when, on his return to America in 1793, he set up his easel for some months in New York City before going to Philadelphia. Bass Otis appeared in New York about 1808, two years later than Thomas Sully, who came in 1806, and again in 1814, by invitation from New York City, to paint Commodore Decatur's portrait, the first of the series of full-lengths of heroes of the War of 1812, ordered by the Common Council.

Meanwhile a number of talented artists had settled permanently in New York City. James Sharpless, an Englishman, who worked principally in pastel, came about 1798, John Trumbull in 1804, and John Paradise in 1810. Rembrandt Peale removed to New York City in 1834. John Wesley Jarvis, an Englishman by birth, was for many years one of the foremost portrait painters in New York, which owns a number of his pictures. Among his contemporaries were William Dunlap, James Herring, who, with James B. Longacre, of Philadelphia, published the "National Portrait Gallery"; Samuel F. B. Morse, among whose portraits is one of Fitz-Greene Halleck in the Public Library; Asher B. Durand, and Samuel L. Waldo, who entered into a partnership with his pupil, William Jewett.


Institutions

The first of New York's institutions devoted to fine arts had for its president Chancellor Livingston. Founded in 1801 as the New York Academy of Fine Arts it was incorporated in 1908 as the American Academy of Fine Arts . The second institution of importance was the National Academy of Design, founded in 1828, but it is a matter of regret that the records of both were most inadequately kept.