Museum Collections

Thomas Cole is best known as the leader of the nineteenth-century American landscape movement known as the Hudson River School. However, he also painted a handful of portraits, including John W. Jones, ca. 1818-25 (Minneapolis Institute of Arts) and the N-YHS's self-portrait from ca. 1836 (1964.41). During this period Cole may have also painted a portrait of John Gallier. The attribution is based on family tradition; the portrait was the gift of the sitter's grandson and granddaughter, Thomas and Mary LeBoutillier. It bears a strong stylistic resemblance to the N-YHS self-portrait, but in the absence of more definitive evidence, the attribution remains tentative. Little is known of the sitter, John Gallier (1799-1881). He and his brother James served an apprenticeship in their native Ireland under their father Thaddeus Gallier, a builder, and in the early 1820s they operated their own small construction firm before moving to London for ten years. It may be there that Gallier married, probably by 1825. The two brothers established themselves in New York in 1832 but several years later went to New Orleans. John returned to New York where he worked at an evolving string of businesses related to home building and decoration. He began as a maker of architectural ornaments in the 1830s; he was most likely successful, since he expanded the business to form the firm of Gallier and Murphy from approximately 1839 to 1844. His later occupations listed in New York City Directories include decorator, builder, and even artist. Gallier and Cole may have known each other through Cole's interest in architecture or Gallier's artistic aspirations. This portrait might have been commissioned during a prosperous period in the mid-1830s, since Gallier himself appears to be in his mid-to-late thirties. His wife Margaret died in 1858, and he later lived with his daughter and son-in-law, Margaret and Thomas LeBoutillier, whose children gave this painting to the Historical Society.