in 1837, and, in 1844, purchased an $8,000 ($299,891.20 in 2022 dollars) farm, which he paid for by painting eight large religious canvases based on engravings of works by Benjamin West. These canvases were exhibited in New York in 1847, but their whereabouts and status are currently unknown. In 1851 Quidor returned to New York where he stayed until his retirement in 1869. During this period, his style changed. He simplified his compositions and used a narrower range of colors, which he thinned with varnish so that his stylized, nervously rendered figures nearly disappeared into hazy backgrounds. He apparently stopped painting in 1868. He lived in Jersey City, New Jersey, where his eldest daughter lived, from 1869 until his death in 1881. Career Little appreciated in his time, Quidor was rediscovered as an important figure in American art after a 1942 exhibition of his works at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. His paintings establish a mysterious romantic setting for scenes in which he mingled macabre elements with an earthy humor. Many of his works, such as The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, were inspired by the writings of Washington Irving. Irving's A History of New York gave Quidor the subjects for the four paintings in the Brooklyn Museum of Art: Dancing on the Battery (c. 1860), Peter Stuyvesant's Wall Street Gate (1864), Voyage of the Good Oloff up the Hudson (1866), and The Voyage from Communipaw to Hell Gate (1866). These show Quidor's characteristic mellow and harmonious color, poetic imagination, and naïve humor. Also in the Brooklyn Museum of Art are his three paintings Dorothea, Money Diggers, and Wolfert's Will. He sometimes painted religious subjects, such as Jesus Blessing the Sick. Further reading Brooklyn Museum, & Baur, J. I. H. (1942). John Quidor, 1801–1881. [Brooklyn]: Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Gallery References External links Art and the empire city: New York, 1825–1861, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Quidor (see index) 1801 births 1881 deaths 19th-century American painters 19th-century male artists American male painters People from Gloucester County, New Jersey Artists from New Jersey Painters from New York City Masterpiece Museum Washington Irving 19th-century painters of historical subjects People from Tappan, New York