Background
James Herring was born on January 12, 1794, in London, England. His father, James Herring, moved his family to New York City when the lad was about ten years old and was first a teacher, then a brewer.
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James Herring
Edit ProfileEducation
James completed his schooling at an academy in Flatbush, Long Island.
Career
James Herring started in business as a distiller with a location in the Bowery near his father. War with England played havoc with his business, and in order to keep the wolf from the door - for he had ventured into matrimony at eighteen - he began to color prints and maps. One of his employers was John Wesley Jarvis, but in time his best patron was Mathew Carey, publisher in Philadelphia, whither he moved. Meantime he tried his hand at drawing profiles and coloring them. Then he attempted to delineate the full face, experimenting with water colors and then with oil. Having been successful in these ventures he gained a reputation as a portrait painter and was employed throughout northern New Jersey. His initiation into Solomon’s Lodge of Masons in Somerset County served to bring him further employment and gave him a lifelong interest in Masonry.
When his skill attracted New York patronage and led him in 1822 to establish a studio not far from his former distillery, Herring became actively engaged as an officer in the several bodies comprising the various branches of the fraternity. For a long period beginning in 1829, he was grand secretary of the grand lodge of New York state. He was orator on the occasion of the “first sorrow lodge” of St. John’s Lodge, No. 1, February 25, 1847, and was much in demand for public addresses.
In order to provide for the financial welfare of his family Herring established on Broadway, about 1830, a circulating library of 10, 000 volumes, called the Enterprise Library. It proved highly successful. His final years were passed in Paris, where he died, but he was interred in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn.
Achievements
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James Herring is famous for projecting the Apollo Gallery at 410 Broadway and preparing the Catalogue of the First Fall Exhibition of the Works of Modern Artists at the Apollo Gallery (1838). This led to the organization of the Apollo Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in the United States (later the American Art Union), of which he was the corresponding secretary.
