John Quidor was born in 1801 in
Tappan, New York. His family moved to New York City in 1810. In 1818, at the age 17, he began an apprenticeship with
John Wesley Jarvis (where artist
Henry Inman was also training), which was the only artistic training he received. The apprenticeship was not a success. None of his decorative work is known to have survived. Starting in 1823, he began creating paintings based on literary themes, including his first two efforts,
Dorothea and
Don Quixote Imagines Melisendra’s Rescue by a Moor, both paintings based on the Miguel de Cervantes novel,
Don Quixote; then following with
Washington Irving's short stories
Legend of Sleepy Hollow and
Rip Van Winkle and
James Fenimore Cooper's book
The Pioneers. During this part of his career, he took on
Thomas Bangs Thorpe and
Charles Loring Elliott as his apprentices. Of his time working for Quidor, Thorpe recalled that "in all the time we were with Quidor, many months, I do not remember of his giving us anything but easel room and one or two very common engravings to copy. He would absent himself from his studio for days and weeks together. When present, if not painting on a banner or engine back, he would generally lie at full length on the long bench." A fire destroyed Quidor's studio, located at 46 Canal Street, on December 16, 1835. That incident, combined with two major
cholera outbreaks in the area and a financial crash in the late 1830s, led Quidor to abandon New York. He moved to
Quincy, Illinois, in 1837, and, in 1844, purchased an $8,000 ($331,985.70 in 2025 dollars) farm, which he paid for by painting eight large religious canvases based on engravings of works by
Benjamin West. These canvases were exhibited in New York in 1847, but their whereabouts and status are currently unknown. In 1851 Quidor returned to New York where he stayed until his retirement in 1869. During this period, his style changed. He simplified his compositions and used a narrower range of colors, which he thinned with varnish so that his stylized, nervously rendered figures nearly disappeared into hazy backgrounds. He apparently stopped painting in 1868. He lived in
Jersey City, New Jersey, where his eldest daughter lived, from 1869 until his death in 1881. ==Career==