Background
William Dunlap was born on February 19, 1766 at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, United States. He was the son of Samuel Dunlap, a young Irishman who was color-bearer in the regiment known as “Wolfe’s Own” on the Plains of Abraham.
(Short Mean Fiction: Words & Pictures by renowned American...)
Short Mean Fiction: Words & Pictures by renowned American artist William Dunlap goes on sale April 1, 2016. Like tales from the Old Testament, the stories in this debut work are mean, rampant with sex, violence, and death. Sure to be a hit with fans of flash fiction, as well as Dunlap’s huge base of followers in the art world, this sketchbook of words and pictures will endure.
https://www.amazon.com/Short-Mean-Fiction-Words-Pictures-ebook/dp/B01FEUQ8EW?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B01FEUQ8EW
( When art reviewers have attempted to pin him down, Miss...)
When art reviewers have attempted to pin him down, Mississippi-born artist William Dunlap has called what he does "hypothetical realism." "These places and situations don't exist, but they could," he says. As the book Dunlap demonstrates, the artist and his work resist classification. Images of animals, flowers, Old Masters, found objects, and artifacts explode from traditional, pastoral landscapes. On the margins, in the middle ground, or in a dark lowering sky, foggy letters whisper a witty aside or reveal a crucial place name. Dunlap creates surreal, disturbing, and sometimes humorous interpretations of the American landscape in paintings, sculptures, constructions, and mixed-media installations. He is a preeminent portrayer of place, especially his native South. His work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and United States embassies throughout the world. He has had solo exhibitions at the Cheekwood Museum of Art, Mississippi Museum of Art, Gibbes Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Morris Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, and other museums and galleries. Dunlap is also widely known for his generous advocacy of artists, for his efforts to increase public awareness of the importance of art, and for his work to secure funding for the arts. Dunlap includes more than 100 full-color reproductions and features work from every stage of a career spanning more than three decades. An essay by J. Richard Gruber, director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, gives both an overview of Dunlap's career and establishes the artist in the context of contemporary American art. The book strengthens William Dunlap's reputation as a major American artist.
https://www.amazon.com/Dunlap-William/dp/1578069041?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1578069041
historian painter playwright theatrical manager
William Dunlap was born on February 19, 1766 at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, United States. He was the son of Samuel Dunlap, a young Irishman who was color-bearer in the regiment known as “Wolfe’s Own” on the Plains of Abraham.
William was educated during his first eleven years.
In 1777 the father’s Loyalist sympathies made it expedient for the family to take up residence in New York, the British headquarters. A year later, while playing war with other boys, William sustained an injury which completely destroyed the sight of his right eye. The accident brought his formal schooling to an end, but he now resolved to develop a talent for drawing that he had already shown. A local artist was engaged to give him a few lessons, and by the age of sixteen the boy had set up as a professional portraitist. Among his early sitters were George and Martha Washington, whose likenesses he made in pastel while he was visiting friends at Rocky Hill, New Jearsey, near the General’s headquarters.
In May 1784, the elder Dunlap, now a prospering china importer, sent his son to London to study painting under Benjamin West. During a foreign residence of over three years William applied himself to almost everything except his studies. He took particular delight in the theatre and saw all the leading actors, including Mrs. Siddons in her prime. Naturally he returned to New York scantily prepared to take up his profession. His success was commensurate with his preparation. It was not long before the studio was deserted for a new interest—the stage.
Fired by the recent success of Royall Tyler’s The Contrast, the first American play to achieve anything like a run, Dunlap wrote a five-act comedy, which he submitted to the managers, but which perished in the greenroom. His second comedy, The Father; or, American Shandyism, brought out in 1789 and later reprinted as The Father of an Only Child, met with sufficient applause to focus his ambition upon the theatre, and new plays from his pen began to appear on the New York stage at the rate of about one a year.
During this period he also ventured into the field of poetry by writing two narrative poems of some length, both of which were included in two contemporary collections of American verse. But such occupations were inadequate for the support of a family consequently his father made him a partner in his business.
In the spring of 1796 Dunlap took the crucial step of his career when he purchased a one-quarter interest in the Old American Company, New York’s sole theatrical concern. He thus entered into partnership with Lewis Hallam and John Hodgkinson, rival actors and sworn enemies of each other. Dunlap’s duties as acting manager, treasurer, and bookkeeper of the company were rendered so distasteful by the hostility of his associates that he soon deeply regretted his venture. The second season brought a realignment of interests by Hallam’s withdrawal from the firm. The improvement was imperceptible. A more exasperating business associate than the irresponsible Hodgkinson it would stretch the imagination to conceive. The business was being conducted at a steady loss, but when, in January 1798, the managers transferred their company from the old John Street house to the new Park Theatre, they hoped for a reversal of fortune. They hoped in vain. By spring Hodgkinson had decided that Boston offered a more lucrative field, and, disposing of his concerns to his partner, he left Dunlap sole director and manager of the New York theatre.
Having discovered that his own plays were but a feeble stimulant to box-office receipts, Dunlap now began to translate French and German successes, particulary those of the then famous Kotzebue. This German dramatist so effectually caught the taste of the town that during the next few years no less than twenty of his pieces were produced, the majority of them translated or adapted by the manager. By the increased support thus gained he contrived to hold his excellent company together. But it was a losing struggle. Grasping associates, a fickle public, yellow fever, ill health, and his own lack of business foresight conspired against his prosperity.
In February 1805, Dunlap declared himself a bankrupt and forfeited his entire property. As a means of supporting his family he now turned to his long-neglected brushes. Miniature portraits being much in demand, he essayed this form of art, although knowing but little of its technique. The season of 1805-06 was spent as an itinerant miniaturist, and, if his returns were small, at least he picked up some knowledge of his craft. In the spring of 1806, T. A. Cooper, formerly a leading actor in Dunlap’s company and now manager at the Park, offered his old employer a position as his general assistant at a fair salary. The arrangement continued for over five years. One consequence of this office was a close acquaintance with the distinguished English actor, George Frederick Cooke, whom Cooper brought to America late in 1810 for a tour of the principal cities. During a part of this tour the dissipated player was entrusted to the guardianship of the abstemious Dunlap, who, shortly after the death of the former, turned this contact to good account by writing the Memoirs of George Fred. Cooke, Esq. , Late of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (1813). Upon quitting the theatre for the second time, about the end of 181 r, Dunlap again turned to painting. When his custom was interrupted by the War of 1812, he undertook the founding of a magazine, but the Monthly Recorder (1813) died with the fifth issue, leaving its editor poorer than before. Fortunately he was appointed assistant paymaster- general to the state militia in 1814, and the problem of how to go on living was temporarily solved. While holding this appointment, he completed a Life of Charles Brockden Brown (1815), His governmental employment came to an end late in 1816, and for the last time Dunlap returned to portrait painting. New York was still his headquarters, but he was often forced to turn itinerant and to visit Norfolk, Montreal, Vermont, and various other places in his search for patrons. He now worked chiefly in oil with only an occasional miniature.
In 1821 he began a series of large show pictures, a popular form of art of the time. His subjects were usually drawn from the Bible and were often deeply indebted to Benjamin West’s canvases of a similar kind. By sending these paintings on tour, the artist somewhat increased his meager earnings and probably did something to educate artistic taste, especially in the rural districts, where they were frequently exhibited. When an insurrection broke out in New York against the reactionary American Academy of the Fine Arts, Dunlap, although a member of that organization, joined forces with the progressives and in 1826 helped to found the National Academy of Design. From its inception he was very active in the affairs of the new society; he was a regular contributor to its annual exhibitions, he held the professorship of historical painting for several years, and served as vice-president from 1831 to 1838. His last years were marked by continued poverty and much illness. In this condition he was helped and heartened by two successful benefits, one theatrical and one artistic, held for him at New York in 1833 and 1838 respectively. He did comparatively little painting during this final period, but in spite of weakened vitality his pen was never more active. His History of the American Theatre was published in 1832, and his two-volume History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States in 1834. Two years later a temperance novel, Thirty Years Ago; or, the Memoirs of a Water Drinker, was brought out. His last energy was given to research in the history of New York. A preliminary study, A History of New York, for Schools, appeared in 1837. The first volume of the completed History of the New Netherlands, Province of New York, and State of New York, to the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, was published in 1839, and the second volume, posthumously, in 1840.
As a playwright he was without original ideas, but his craftsmanship was competent, and by employing ideas current on the English stage he was able to manufacture plays that were theatrically interesting and that contributed toward fashioning the tastes of the public and the practise of other writers. For instance, he experimented with the comedy of manners of the sentimental type, then popular abroad, but before Dunlap, except for Tyler’s Contrast, unattempted in America. In serious drama Dunlap made two important innovations: he was the first in this country to write Gothic or terroristic plays, a species well illustrated by his Fontainville Abbey (acted 1795) and Ribbemont; or, the Feudal Baron (acted 1796) ; and he broke away from the formal pseudo-classic manner of the typical eighteenth-century tragedy, to which his American predecessors had adhered. In the two plays just mentioned and also in Leicester (acted 1794) he created a definitely romantic atmosphere for tragedy and tragicomedy. It is worthy of note that in these three particulars Dunlap’s efforts were quickly followed by a succession of American plays of similar type. If he did not, in all such cases, provide the model for his fellow playwrights, at least he was in the forefront of those who took the unaccustomed path.
As a translator he reworked numerous Continental successes both French and German, often with considerable skill. His knowledge of stage technique and his facile, colloquial style sometimes created an adaptation more effective than the original. By bringing these European plays, ephemeral though they wrere, before the audiences of provincial America, he helped in some measure to give the United States a more cosmopolitan view of contemporary culture. With occasional dramatic work as late as 1828, Dunlap wrote in all approximately thirty original plays and made about the same number of translations. In quality his achievement was far superior to the average of his time. The Father of an Only Child, The Italian Father (acted 1799), Leicester, and André (acted 1798), the last two written in smooth and forceful blank verse, are probably the four most actable American plays of the eighteenth century, and they are interesting reading even today. In quantity of output he immensely outranked all predecessors. Perhaps, then, the title of the father of American drama, which has been applied to him, is no misnomer. In his office as theatrical manager Dunlap aspired to establish a truly moral and cultural theatre, but popular taste did not support his efforts and he was compelled to compromise. He at least succeeded in offering more encouragement to American playwrights than they had formerly received, and he gave Continental drama its first real hearing in the United States, as well as featuring most of the current British plays.
As a painter he must be regarded as a minor figure in an age that produced several great artists. Both his miniatures and his oils commonly show some stiffness and flatness — perhaps because he saw with only one eye. At the same time his subjects look like actual men and women with definite personalities, and in an occasional portrait he displays a power that commands admiration. Of more lasting influence than his plays and paintings are, A History of the American Theatre and the Arts of Design. In spite of inaccuracies both are still regarded as indispensable authorities, for they contain a fund of first-hand information that could have been provided by no other writer, and in both, the personal side of the actors or artists is so stressed as to produce a readability seldom found in works of this nature. He was an ardent American and never lost a chance to defend republican institutions. One result of his numerous activities was that he enjoyed close association with some of the leading men of his day, among them Irving, Bryant, Cooper, Samuel F. B. Morse, Gilbert Stuart, James Kent, and in particular Charles Brockden Brown. He could be a good hater, but his generosity, his love of good-fellowship, and his varied intellectual interests gained him a multitude of friends. Despite many hardships he faced life with cheerful fortitude. Even the strain of his often acute poverty he bore philosophically, conscious that he had forsaken his father’s profitable business for the harder service of arts that his age scantily rewarded, but that he honestly loved.
( When art reviewers have attempted to pin him down, Miss...)
(Short Mean Fiction: Words & Pictures by renowned American...)
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Dunlap could be a good hater, but his generosity, his love of good-fellowship, and his varied intellectual interests gained him a multitude of friends. Despite many hardships he faced life with cheerful fortitude. Even the strain of his often acute poverty he bore philosophically, conscious that he had forsaken his father’s profitable business for the harder service of arts that his age scantily rewarded, but that he honestly loved.
Dunlap was a man who pursued many interests and championed many causes, and always with large energy and enthusiasm.
Dunlap was a man of only moderate talent but of unusual versatility, and he touched the cultural life of his day at many points.
On February 10, 1789 Dunlap married Elizabeth Woolsey. He was survived by his wife and his son John Alexander Dunlap. A daughter, Margaret Ann, had died in 1837.