Collection Highlights
Portrait of a Heroic Fireman
ca. 1857
1937.328
Polychrome painted and carved wood
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Museum Collections
Luce Center
William De Peyster, Sr. (1709-1784)
Title
William De Peyster, Sr. (1709-1784)
Date
1798
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Overall: 30 x 25 in. ( 76.2 x 63.5 cm )
Credit Line
Bequest of Emily M. De Peyster
Object Number
1918.11
Gallery Label
The subject of this portrait was born in New York, the son of Johannes (1666-1711) and Anna (Bancker) De Peyster. He was an officer in the militia and an assistant alderman of the common council prior to the capture of New York by the British in the Revolution. Peale made copies of portraits of William De Peyster, Sr., and his wife for Ann De Peyster, the subject's daughter, while in New York in 1798. The portrait of Mr. De Peyster was a gift to the Society from his great-great-granddaughter.
Bibliography
Sellers, Charles Coleman, Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale, The Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 42, Part I, Philadelphia: 1952, pp. 66, 270.
Belknap, Waldron Phoenix, Jr. The De Peyster Geneaology. Boston: Privately Printed, 1956, pp. 63-4, fig. 12
Belknap, Waldron Phoenix, Jr. American Colonial Painting, materials for a history. Cambridge, Mass. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959, pp. 47-58, II-IV.
Catalogue of American Portraits in The New-York Historical Society, New Haven: Yale University Press, Vol. 1, 1974, pp 207-8.
Due to ongoing research, information about this object is subject to change.
