[AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED, FROM ALEXANDER HAMILTON TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT, REGARDING THE PROMISING YOUNG PAINTER, WILLIAM WINSTANLEY]

Book Description

Philadelphia. April 10, 1793.. [1]p. Quarto. Light fold lines. Slight minor soiling in margins. In near fine condition. In a half morocco and cloth slipcase. An autograph letter, signed, by Alexander Hamilton concerning William Winstanley, a British- born artist who was one of the earliest landscape painters in America. In the course of his recommendation of the promising young painter, the first Treasury Secretary of the United States also mentions John Jay and Martha Washington. "Mr. Winstanley brought me a letter of introduction from Chief Justice Jay, stating him to be a Young Gentleman from England, who, without having made it a profession, has made some promising essays in Landscape Painting. There are two views of situations on Hudson's River painted by Mr. Winstanley, in the drawing room of Mrs. Washington, which have great intrinsic merit - and considered with reference to his opportunities, as related, announce a very superior genius in the branch of painting, worthy of encouragement." Winstanley arrived in the United States as a youth prior to 1793, and soon sold two Hudson River paintings to George Washington. These works, entitled "Morning, Hudson River" and "Evening, Hudson River," are now in the collection of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association in Virginia. Winstanley's scenes of the Potomac were also purchased by the first president, and two other early landscapes are now in the collection of the Smithsonian. Falk notes that the artist "also took up portrait painting and made copies of one of Gilbert Stuart's Washington portraits, which some sources say Winstanley then tried to sell as his own...The Washington portrait in the White House is said to be one of these copies." A fine Hamilton letter concerning the early career of one of the earliest landscape painters in the United States. FALK III, p.3606 (Winstanley).

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