grandson of portrait painter Pieter Vanderlyn
at Archibald Robertson’s drawing academy; with portrait painter Gilbert Stuart (Philadelphia); with François-Andre Vincent (Paris)
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
Paris (1796-1815; 1839-46)
US Government
Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos, 1809-14 (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadephia)
Edgerton, Samuel Y. Jr. “The Murder of Jane McCrea : The Tragedy of an American ‘Tableau d’Histoire,’” The Art Bulletin, vol. 47 (December 1965): 481-9
Mondello, Salvatore. The Private Papers of John Vanderlyn (1775-1852): American Portrait Painter. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990