Picturing prestige: paintings of high society figures, titans of industry, and Founding Fathers illustrate early New York's growth as city and arts capital.

PositionUSA Yesterday - "Picturing Prestige: New York Portraits, 1700-1860" exhibition

"PICTURING PRESTIGE: New York Portraits, 1700-1860" is an ensemble of iconic New Yorkers presented by intricate and elegant portraits, which were commissioned as status symbols and painted by the very best artists a young nation had to offer.

Visitors to the exhibition will see familiar figures, such as the renowned John Trumbull portrait of Alexander Hamilton that inspired the image on our $10 bill, and also will come face-to-face with New Yorkers like Richard Varick, of Varick Street in Greenwich Village, and the Brooks family, of Brooks Brothers fame, whose names are part of the city's fabric but whose stories remain untold to a broad audience.

This unique exhibition draws from the Museum of the City of New York's permanent collection to reveal the evolution of a dynamic city through its leading merchants, politicians, and patrons, as well as the development of portraiture itself, one of New York's oldest visual art forms.

"New York City's distinctive character and unique personality have always come from its citizens," notes Whitney Donhauser, director of the City Museum. "This exhibition explores over 150 years of city life through the lives of many of history's most celebrated New Yorkers, offering visitors an intensely engaging and deeply personal interaction with the past."

"Picturing Prestige"--curated by Bruce Weber, City Museum's curator of Paintings and Sculpture--relies on the people who shaped New York in its formative years to tell the story of how the city grew from its colonial foundations through the Revolutionary War and blossomed into a mercantile powerhouse in the mid 19th century. The namesakes of McDougall and Varick streets in the Village are brought to life by centuries-old paintings of Alexander McDougall and Varick. Brooks Brothers is a household name in present-day America, and the exhibit displays the early Brooks family in the light they wished to be shown in their own time.

The exhibition also is a study in the art of portraiture and New York's place as an artistic hub, showcasing more...

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