John Quidor

Biography John Quidor was born in 1801 in Tappan, New York. His family moved to New York City in 1810. In 1818, at the age 17, he began an apprenticeship with John Wesley Jarvis (where artist Henry Inman was also training), which was the only artistic training he received. The apprenticeship was not a success.

None of his decorative work is known to have survived.

His paintings establish a mysterious romantic setting for scenes in which he mingled macabre elements with an earthy humor. Many of his works, such as The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, were inspired by the writings of Washington Irving. Irving's A History of New York gave Quidor the subjects for the four paintings in the Brooklyn Museum of Art: Dancing on the Battery (c. 1860), Peter Stuyvesant's Wall Street Gate (1864), Voyage of the Good Oloff up the Hudson (1866), and The Voyage from Communipaw to Hell Gate (1866). These show Quidor's characteristic mellow and harmonious color, poetic imagination, and naïve humor.

Also in the Brooklyn Museum of Art are his three paintings Dorothea, Money Diggers, and Wolfert's Will. He sometimes painted religious subjects, such as Jesus Blessing the Sick.

Gallery