Vanderlyn, John

Vanderlyn, John (b Kingston, NY, 15 Oct. 1775; d Kingston, 24 Sept. 1852).
American painter, active mainly in and around New York. Between 1796 and 1815 he lived in Europe (apart from brief visits to America) and his style was closer to mainstream Neoclassicism and Romanticism than that of almost any other American painter of his generation. He was the first American painter to study in Paris and also worked in Rome. His best-known painting is Ariadne Asleep on Naxos (1812–14, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia), a reclining figure in the tradition of the Venuses of Giorgione and Titian that is regarded as the finest American nude before Eakins. Although such works won him considerable renown in France, he was much less successful in America, where he worked mainly as a portraitist, and he died poor and embittered.