Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library is an American estate and museum in Winterthur, Delaware. Winterthur houses one of the richest collections of Americana in the United States. The museum and estate were the home of Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969), Winterthur's founder and a prominent antiques collector and horticulturist.
Ottobah Cugoano, also known as John Stuart, was an abolitionist, political activist, and natural rights philosopher from West Africa who was active in Great Britain in the latter half of the 18th century.
Henry Francis du Pont was an American horticulturist, collector of early American furniture and decorative arts, breeder of Holstein Friesian cattle, and scion of the powerful du Pont family. Converted into a museum in 1951, his estate of Winterthur in Delaware is the world's premier museum of American furniture and decorative arts.
Benjamin Lay was an English-born writer, farmer and activist. Born in Copford, Essex into a Quaker family, he was initially underwent an apprenticeship as a glovemaker before running away to London and finding work as a sailor. In 1718, Lay moved to the British colony of Barbados, which operated on a plantation economy dependent on slave labour. While working as a merchant, his shock at the brutal treatment of slaves in Barbados led Lay to develop lifelong abolitionist principles, which were reinforced by his humanitarian ideals and Quaker beliefs.
The free-produce movement was an international boycott of goods produced by slave labor. It was used by the abolitionist movement as a non-violent way for individuals, including the disenfranchised, to fight slavery.
In Front of Yorktown is an oil painting completed in 1863 by the American artist Winslow Homer. It depicts men from McClellan's Army of the Potomac, before the Siege of Yorktown during the American Civil War. The painting is in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery.
Elise Ford née Sophie Elise Forsberg was an American painter, who was a student and a favorite model of Howard Chandler Christy. She posed for many of Christy's well-known patriotic posters, including 1941 "I am An American" personifying America "rushing forward to give the touch of the contagion of liberty and democracy to the rest of the world" in the words of then New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia. In mid-1930s she posed for Christy's posters for the annual Franklin D. Roosevelt charitable birthday balls to raise funds to fight infantile paralysis. Elise Ford, 40 years younger than Christy, was his companion for over 20 years until his death in 1952, and she is the mother of Christy's out-of-wedlock daughter Holly.
The American Pre-Raphaelites was a movement of landscape painters in the United States during the mid-19th century. It was named for its connection to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and for the influence of John Ruskin on its members. Painter Thomas Charles Farrer led the movement, and many members were active abolitionists. Their work together was short-lived, and the movement had mostly dissolved by 1870.
Anna Pottery was a pottery located in the city of Anna in Union County, Illinois, from 1859 to 1910. They sold stoneware and white clay ware.
Jacques Antoine Bidermann, also known as James Antoine Bidermann, was an American businessman of French and Swiss origins who became the business partner and son-in-law of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont. He married into the Du Pont family and founded the estate that later became the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.
Ruth Wales du Pont was an American socialite, philanthropist, amateur classical composer, and spouse of Henry Francis du Pont, who founded Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.
Captain John Purves and His Wife, Eliza Anne Pritchard, is an oil-on-canvas portrait created by American painter Henry Benbridge (1743–1812). It was painted in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1775. A bequest from Henry Francis du Pont, the painting is held in the permanent collection of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.
Joseph Downs was an American museum curator and scholar of American decorative arts. After 17 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Downs became founding curator of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library from 1949 to 1954. His assistant, Charles F. Montgomery, became Winterthur's first director after Downs' death.
Victorine Elizabeth du Pont Bauduy (1792–1861) was an American school superintendent and eldest daughter of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771–1834), who founded E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, and of Sophie Madeleine Dalmas du Pont.
Samuel Folwell (1764–1813) was an American artist who worked in the 18th and 19th century. He is best known for creating works of mourning art which are pieces that memorialize loved ones and sometimes incorporate hair or mementos of the deceased.
John A. H. Sweeney was an American curator, scholar, and writer specializing in the American decorative arts. He spent his career in curatorial and leadership positions at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library.
Martha Lou Gandy Fales was an American art historian, museum curator, and author specializing in historic American silversmithing and jewelry. She worked as a curator and keeper of the silver at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library during the late 1950s and worked mostly as an independent historian and consultant after that. Her seminal book Jewelry in America (1995) received the Charles F. Montgomery Prize from the Decorative Arts Society.
Milo Merle Naeve was an American art historian, curator, and museum administrator who worked at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, Colonial Williamsburg, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago, where he held the first curatorship in American arts and the first endowed curatorship at the Institute.
Election Day in Philadelphia is an oil-on-canvas genre painting by American artist John Lewis Krimmel (1786–1821). It was painted in Philadelphia in 1815. Purchased with funds provided by Henry Francis du Pont, the work is held in the permanent collection of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. The painting depicts grassroots democratic participation in the early Republic, with a raucous crowd gathered outside Independence Hall to celebrate and engage in electoral politics.
Quilting Frolic is an oil-on-canvas genre painting by American artist John Lewis Krimmel (1786–1821). It was painted in Philadelphia in 1813. Purchased in 1953, the work is held in the permanent collection of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. The painting depicts an interior domestic scene of merrymaking with a Black child serving and a Black fiddler entertaining partygoers celebrating the completion of a quilt.
