Huntington, Daniel

Daniel Huntington, a native New Yorker, was born in 1816. He attended Yale and then Hamilton College; after graduating, he came home to New York to be a painter in about 1835.  His first stop was Samuel F. B. Morse’s studio in New York. Huntington worked with Morse for about a year as his student, but knew Morse as a colleague for decades.

Huntington was elected into the National Academy of Design in 1839, and later served as its president twice, for a total of 22 years.  He exhibited in every major national art institution as well as the Royal Academy, London and the Paris Salon. Huntington assisted in the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library.

Huntington followed Morse in his interest in painting allegorical and historical subjects. Huntington also painted portraits painting about a thousand portraits over about 50 years.  Presidents and merchants, judges and poets, all came to sit in his studio on East 20th Street in New York.