The Hudson River from Ocean to Source (Bacon, 1903)
John Vanderlyn, the celebrated painter, was born in Kingston late in the eighteenth century. He was first apprenticed to a waggon-painter, and the genius that was in him developed in spite of this prosaic occupation. For several years he struggled >to reconcile his vocation with his avocation, to possess his soul while laying smooth panels of coach varnish and striping wheels. At length one day that meddler with many fortunes. Colonel Aaron Burr, strayed into the Kingston tavern, and while waiting there saw some of Vanderlyn 's work. He called for the artist, and the result of that interview was that the young man ceased to paint waggons and went to Europe to learn to paint pictures. In 1808, at the Louvre, he received a gold
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medal offered I)}' Xapoleon for the Ijest composition of the }-ear. His subject was Mariiis on the Ruins of Carthage. Nearly forty >-ears later he ]:)ainted the Landing of Columbus, which is in the Ca]ntol at Washington, but even then his power had l)egun to decline, and the work is considered quite inferior to some of his earlier productions. Eight years later the painter died in po\'ertv in Kingston, and his remains were laid in the old Wiltw^yck cemetery. Allusion has been made to the Huguenots who founded New Paltz. At first their national language and form of worshi]) distinguished them from their Dutch neighbours, but gradually, in the course of several generations, both of these distinguishing ])eculiarities were forgotten and the descendants of Dubois, Hasbrouck, Lefever, Bevier, Crispell, and then* companions could not be distinguished except by name from those of Ten Broeck, Van Gaasbeek, or Blom. A descendant of Dubois became one of the prominent ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church, and others of Huguenot lineage have followed his example.