Photographed by Scott Wolff. Scanned from a slide. Color corrected by Pat Cagney.

John Younie Luyster

Artist Ammi Phillips (American, 1788-1865)

Dateca. 1838

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsOverall: 46 x 30 1/2 in. (116.8 x 77.5 cm)
Overall, Frame: 50 9/16 x 35 5/8 x 3 3/16 in. (128.4 x 90.5 x 8.1 cm)

ClassificationsAmerican art

Credit LineGift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

Object number74.6.4

Terms

Child
Boy
Strawberries
White
Black
Brown
Red
American naive
New York

On View

Not on view

DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas painting of John Younie Luyster. He wears a brown suit with a black bow and wide white collar. His face is solemn and unsmiling. His left arm is leaning on a table set with two books. In his left hand he holds a sprig of strawberries, his right hand holds the thin chain which is leashed to his dog. The brown dog rests quietly in the foreground and the bottom right of the painting.

Label TextAmmi Phillips American (1788-1865) John Younie Luyster, ca. 1838 Oil on canvas Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch 74.6.4 Descended from a Dutch family that settled near the Hudson River in the mid-1700s, John Younie Luyster was born July 3, 1828, and lived in LaGrange, New York. He died September 6, 1886, and is buried with his parents, children, and wife Sarah in the graveyard of New Hackensack Dutch Reformed Church, near present-day LaGrangeville. Posing in a "grown-up" suit, the young Luyster is supplied with several details suggestive of childhood: school books, strawberries, and a faithful pet dog. Like other itinerant folk painters of his day, Ammi Phillips repeatedly used these and other attributes to enliven his many portraits of children. Phillips set his subjects in simple, well-designed arrangements, his crisp outlines and unmodulated colors clearly related to his work as a sign painter. The subjects of his finest portraits, including ten-year-old Luyster, were his own neighbors in Duchess County, New York, and the nearby communities of Kent and Sharon in Connecticut.