1803-1815: European Experience, Again!

French Woman Oil on panel. 1803 - 1815

In 1803, Vanderlyn was offered the opportunity to purchase a collection of casts of antique statues for the newly organized American Academy of Arts. He jumped at the chance to return to Europe where he could have his Niagara paintings engraved. Through his associations with Chancellor Robert Livingston, who had been instrumental in founding the Academy and who was then Ambassador to France, Vanderlyn was launched into the world of American diplomacy in Paris. He met and painted James Monroe, Minister Extraordinary, then visiting Paris to negotiate the purchase of the Louisiana Territory.

Unsuccessful efforts to locate an engraver in France brought Vanderlyn across the channel to London where the plates were to be prepared by two different engravers and sent on to France for printing. These were never delivered, although a small number of prints were struck in London and arrived in New York in 1805. For the next 12 years, Vanderlyn tried in vain to recover the missing plates. One happy result of his trip to England was his introduction to Washington Allston, an American artist studying in London. Vanderlyn befriended Allston and later traveled extensively throughout Europe with him.

Vanderlyn painted his first historical picture, The Death of Jane McCrea , in 1804. Commissioned by the poet Joel Barlow, a devoted friend of Robert Fulton, this work was to beone of a series of ten illustrations for The Columbiad , his long philosophical poem. Unfortunately, when a misunderstanding arose regarding the terms of his contract, Vanderlyn lost the commission and was forced to turn to portrait work to support himself. During these difficult times, he produced paintings of Robert Livingston, Washington Irving, and philanthropist William Maclure of Philadelphia. Maclure, then a commissioner to France, became Vanderlyn's newest patron, providing him with funds for a long-awaited trip to Italy where he was able to rejoin his friend, Washington Allston.

Col. Jacobus Severyn Bruyn (1751 - 1825) Watercolor on ivory. 1815

Rome served as the locale in which Vanderlyn hoped to perfect his skills as a historical painter. To achieve these results, he visited great collections, attended classes in life drawing, and produced innumerable sketches and copies after many of the great masters. It was in Rome that he began his large-scale work, Caius Marius amid the Ruins of Carthage , a piece which brought him the praise of his contemporaries. The completion of Marius saw Vanderlyn's return to Paris where the painting, accepted for exhibition in the Paris Salon of 1808, won a gold medal from Napoleon.

Vanderlyn remained in Paris completing a copy of Antiope , a painting in the Louvre, by the summer of 1809. The following year he began work on Ariadne on the Island of Naxos . Ariadne is significant not only becuase it was Vanderlyn's first original composition of the nude, but also because it was the first formal study of a nude figure in the history of American painting. It was at this time that Aaron Burr, himself abroad following his trial for treason, found Vanderlyn in Paris. Burr's letters and jounal entries over the course of the year that followed reveal much colorful information about both Vanderlyn's activities and Burr's unsuccessful attempts to persuade him to return home. Unfortunately, by the time Vanderlyn was convinced, America's declaration of war against England dashed all hopes of a homeward passage.

Vanderlyn's remaining years in Europe were not only lonely and impoverished, but were filled with frustration. He was unable to recover the plates for his Niagara engravings or to locate his paintings of Marius and Antiope , the safe passage of which he had entrusted to General John Armstrong in 1810. Several of the paintings he had executed in Rome were also missing. The war's end saw Vanderlyn engaged in preparing drawings and sketches for a project he had long considered, the painting of a panorama for exhibition in America.

(Next: 1816-1837: The American Experience).