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John Vanderlyn

Born: Kingston, NY, 15 October 1775
Died: Kingston, NY, 24 September 1852
Nationality: American
Background: 

 grandson of portrait painter Pieter Vanderlyn

Studies: 

at Archibald Robertson’s drawing academy; with portrait painter Gilbert Stuart (Philadelphia); with François-Andre Vincent (Paris)

Career: 

1796 – moves to France with occasional returns to the US until 1815

1800 – begins exhibiting at Paris Salon

1803-4 – receives commission from President Thomas Jefferson’s envoy in France, Joel Barlow, for The Death of Jane McCrea; painting travels as a pay-as-you-enter exhibition to New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans

1808 – receives médaille d’encouragement from Napoleon for Caius Marius on the Ruins of Carthage (de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco)

1839-46 – completes Landing of Columbus, for the US Capitol in Washington, DC (in situ), in Paris

Travels

Paris (1796-1815; 1839-46)

Commissions from: 

US Government

Important Artworks: 

Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos, 1809-14 (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadephia)