Daniel Huntington
Daniel Huntington
1816 - 1906
American painter. Born into a distinguished New England family, he studied at Yale College and at Hamilton College, New York, where he met and was encouraged by the painter Charles Loring Elliott. In 1835 Huntington went to New York to study with Samuel F. B. Morse and by 1838 had his first pupil, Henry Peters Gray (1819–77). He was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1839, an Academician in the following year and twice served as its President (1862–9 and 1877–91). Although based in New York, he exhibited at all the major national art institutions as well as at the Royal Academy, London. In 1847 he was a founder-member of the Century Club, over which he presided in 1879–95. He later helped found the Metropolitan Museum of Art and served as its Vice-President from 1871 until 1903.
Huntington early showed an interest in landscape painting, in which he was an associate and stylistic follower of the Hudson River school, but his academic training and religious convictions inspired an ambition to paint historical, particularly religious, subjects. A Sibyl (1840; New York, Hist. Soc.) and Early Christian Martyrs (1840; Baton Rouge, LA State U.), both painted in Italy, reflect the spiritual earnestness of the German Nazarenes and the technique of Italian Renaissance masters. On his return to New York, Huntington established his reputation with Mercy’s Dream (1841; Philadelphia, PA Acad. F.A.). He rendered this unusual subject, taken from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, with a delicacy of form, brushstroke and colour reminiscent of Raphael. Its success suggested another subject from Bunyan, Christiana and her Children Passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death (Philadelphia, PA Acad. F.A.), which he finished on his second trip to Europe in 1843–5. There he also painted an ideal portrait entitled Italy (1843; Washington, DC, N. Mus. Amer. A.) and created illustrations for an engraved edition of Longfellow’s poems published by Carey & Hart of Philadelphia. In the late 1840s Huntington chose subjects from English history. Queen Mary Signs the Death Warrant of Lady Jane Grey (1848; ex-Douglas Putnam priv. col., Marietta, OH) was engraved for distribution by the American Art-Union in 1848.
In 1850 a major one-man exhibition of Huntington’s work demonstrated his popularity with fellow artists and public alike. At about this time he turned increasingly to portraiture, for which he tapped a network of family, collegiate, social and artistic connections. He painted about a thousand portraits; the earliest show the influence of Henry Inman in their even surfaces and straightforward compositions. By the 1850s his reputation brought commissions for elaborate, full-scale portraits, which he treated with looser brushwork and dramatic lighting inspired by Titian and Reynolds. On a visit to England in 1851, Huntington painted Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1851; New York, Hist. Soc.) and John Bird Sumner, Archbishop of Canterbury (1851; New York, Gen. Theol. Semin.). He made four return visits to Europe between 1852 and 1883. His other distinguished sitters include William Cullen Bryant (1866; New York, Brooklyn Mus.) and Ulysses S. Grant (1875; New York, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette). The group portrait American Projectors of the Atlantic Cable (1894; New York, Chamber of Commerce) includes Cyrus W. Field, Samuel F. B. Morse and a self-portrait.
In 1861 Huntington combined history painting with portraiture in the Republican Court (or Mrs Washington’s Reception, 1861, exh. Paris Exposition 1867; New York, Brooklyn Mus.), which anticipated interest in the Colonial period generated by the Centennial celebrations. It was engraved by Alexander Hay Ritchie (1822–95). With religious allegories such as Sowing the Word (1868; New York, Hist. Soc.) he reaffirmed his early ideal of art as a moral force and his admiration for the Old Masters. Fundamentally conservative in both technique and principles, with an engaging personality and a talent for institutional affairs, he exercised considerable influence in the academic establishment of his day. In this role, as well as in his painting, Huntington resisted the changes sweeping American art in the last quarter of the 19th century and clung to the artistic ideals of his youth. [Wendy Greenhouse. " Huntington, Daniel." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T039559.]
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