A respected leader in New York’s artistic circles throughout most of the second half of the nineteenth century, Daniel Huntington also was one of the most productive portraitists. He was raised in comfortable circumstances. After private preparatory schools, he attended Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, for a year before transferring to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where the itinerant CHARLES LORING ELLIOTT came to paint portraits. Fascinated, Huntington borrowed some materials, learned what he could from Elliott, and tried to learn to be a portraitist. In 1835 he enrolled in the art department recently established at New York University by Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872). He next studied with HENRY INMAN. In 1839 he went to Rome, Florence, and Paris for further study.
Huntington was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1839 and a full member the following year. Returning to New York in 1840, he achieved almost immediate success with the ideal subjects and genre pieces upon which his reputation was to rest. In 1842 he married and returned to Italy for three years. He was accorded the exceptional honor of a retrospective exhibition at the American Art-Union in 1850. He lived in England from 1851 to 1858 and visited Europe for the last time in 1882. In 1862 he was elected president of the National Academy of Design, a position he held longer than anyone else, from 1862 to 1869 and from 1877 to 1891. He served as vicepresident of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1870 to 1903. He continued to paint almost until the time of his death.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
New York, Art Union Buildings, Catalogue of Paintings by Daniel Huntington, N.A., exh. cat., 1850, with essay by the artist § D[aniel] O’C[onnell] Townley, "Living American Artists: Daniel Huntington, Ex-President N.A.D.," Scribner’s Monthly 2 (May 1871): 44-49 § "An Artist on Art," Appletons’ Journal 18 (December 1877): 537-43, interview with the artist § Agnes Gilchrist, "Daniel Huntington: Portrait Painter over Seven Decades," Antiques 87 (June 1965): 709-11 § William H. Gerdts, "Daniel Huntington’s Mercy’s Dream: A Pilgrimage through Bunyanesque Imagery," Winterthur Portfolio 14 (Summer 1979): 171-94.
