Details

Title

Wolfert Webber at the Inn (Wolfert Webber's Golden Dream)

Artist/Maker

John Quidor (American, 1801–1881)

Date

1857

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

27 x 34 inches

Credit

Purchase with funds from Margaret and Terry Stent Endowment for the Acquisition of American Art

Accession #

2010.15

On View

On View - Stent Family Wing, Level 3, Gallery 307

Having found little success as a portrait painter, John Quidor turned to literary inspiration and adapted the popular writings of Washington Irving for many of his paintings. Here, Quidor illustrates the culminating moment of Irving’s tale Wolfert Webber’s Golden Dream (1824), set in the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New York. The protagonist, Wolfert Webber, celebrates his new wealth as a real estate magnate after developers looking to expand the city limits on the isle of Manhattan purchase his cabbage farm.