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Daniel Wadsworth

1771 - 1848

Biography(b Middletown, CT, 8 Aug 1771; d Hartford, CT, 28 July 1848).
American patron and collector. The son of Hartford’s wealthiest merchant and financier, Wadsworth led the retired and somewhat eccentric life of a rentier. He dabbled in architecture and achieved a moderate competence in landscape drawing. Wadsworth collected art in a desultory manner, buying original paintings and copies from John Trumbull (his wife’s uncle) and commissioning works from Thomas Sully, Alvan Fisher, Chauncey B. Ives and Robert Ball Hughes (1806–68). His preference was for landscape painting, his interest no doubt stimulated by his purchase in 1805 of a spectacular country estate, Monte Video, overlooking Hartford. He was an early and fervent supporter of Thomas Cole, commissioning seven paintings from the artist between 1826 and 1828, including White Mountain Scenery, St John the Baptist in the Wilderness, Last of the Mohicans and View of Monte Video (all Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum).

Wadsworth is remembered primarily as the founder of the first public art museum in the USA. Conceived in 1841, the Wadsworth Atheneum opened in 1844 in a Gothic Revival building designed by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis. Wadsworth commissioned works from Cole and Frederic Edwin Church for the fledgling institution and bequeathed to it his own collection. [Alan Wallach. "Wadsworth, Daniel." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 15, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T090318.]

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