Jonathan Sturges (businessman)

Portrait of Sturges by Asher Brown Durand, c. 1840

Jonathan Sturges (1802 – November 28, 1874) was an American businessman and arts patron. He was born in Southport, Connecticut, and was the grandson of Connecticut congressman Jonathan Sturges.[1] Sturges' father had a failed business, so in 1821 Jonathan went to New York City and worked as a clerk in Luman Reed's grocery business and eventually became a one-third partner in it (1828) and the senior partner upon the death of Reed. Reed was Sturges' introduction to arts patronage. With the success of that business, he moved into other enterprises. He was a founder and director of the Bank of Commerce of New York, a founder and director of the Illinois Central Railroad, and a shareholder in the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. He helped found the Union League Club of New York and became its second president in 1863. His wife was Mary Pemberton Cady (1806–1894).

Sturges became an important American patron of the arts, acquiring Luman Reed's collection with a group following Reed's death in 1836. He commissioned numerous paintings from American artists, such as Kindred Spirits, a tribute to Thomas Cole by Asher Brown Durand; Durand also made portraits of the Sturges family. The group created the New-York Gallery of Fine Arts for Reed's collection, which eventually went to the New York Historical Society. Sturges patronized other American artists such as Frederic Edwin Church, Henry Inman, William Sidney Mount, John Gadsby Chapman, Henry Kirke Brown, Henry Peters Gray, Charles C. Ingham, and Robert W. Weir. His art collection was one of ten significant private collections in New York City included in Henry Tuckerman's 1867 Book of the Artists.[1]

Sturges had four children. His daughter Virginia (1830–1902) married railroad executive William H. Osborn in 1853, and daughter Amelia married J. P. Morgan in 1861 but died soon after.

References

  1. 1 2 Oaklander, Christine I. (2008). "Jonathan Sturges, W. H. Osborn, and William Church Osborn: A Chapter in American Art Patronage". Metropolitan Museum Journal. 43: 173–194.
  • Caldwell, John; Roque, Oswaldo Rodriguez (1994). American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vol. 1. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  • Wallach, Alan (2018). "Aestheticizing Tendencies in Hudson River School Landscape Painting at the Beginning of the Gilded Age". In Laster, Margaret R.; Bruner, Chelsea. New York: Art and Cultural Capital of the Gilded Age. Routledge. ISBN 9781351027564.
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