Ambrose Andrews (1805-1859)

It wasn’t until age twenty-three that Ambrose Andrews started formal studies in painting. Ultimately considered an itinerant painter associated with primitive portraits and landscapes, Andrews was in fact one of the founding members of the New York Drawing Association, hence the National Academy of Design, and exhibited at other prestigious venues such as the Pennsylvania Academy in 1848, the American Art Union and London’s Royal Academy in 1859.

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Born in 1801 in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the early years of Andrews’ life are mysterious. The first recorded work by Andrews is a watercolor of his wealthy patron Philip Schuyler of Schuylerville, New York, done in 1824. The portrait, now in the collection of the New York Historical Society, demonstrates his somewhat awkward and primitive style prior to beginning formal study in New York at the American Academy of the Fine Arts the same year. Itinerant for much of his career, Andrews painted portraits and landscapes throughout New York State, as well as in St. Louis, Stockbridge, New Haven, New Orleans, Montreal, Texas and Vermont. His most famous painting, The Children of Nathan Starr, painted in Connecticut in 1835, is held in the collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.