1. Daniel Wadsworth of Hartford, Connecticut, was an American amateur artist and architect, arts patron and traveler.
12 Facts About Daniel Wadsworth
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Daniel Wadsworth is most remembered as the founder of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in his home city.
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Daniel Wadsworth was descended from some of the first Puritan settlers of the Connecticut colony.
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The senior Wadsworth was involved in trade, manufacturing, banking, and insurance.
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Young Daniel Wadsworth was educated partly at home; he was introduced to the great art and architecture of the royal courts of Europe by his father, who traveled there with him.
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Daniel Wadsworth took many trips with writer Benjamin Silliman and Trumbull to Niagara Falls and the White Mountains to write accounts and sketch the landscapes they saw.
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Daniel Wadsworth played a formative role in the life and work of a fellow son of Hartford, Frederic Edwin Church, whose prodigious talent Wadsworth was among the first to recognize.
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Daniel Wadsworth then announced his plans to build "a Gallery of Fine Arts" on Main Street in Hartford, which would later be named after him as the Wadsworth Atheneum.
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Daniel Wadsworth provided many of the art objects initially displayed from his personal collection in addition to the ones from the American Academy.
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Daniel Wadsworth helped poet Lydia Sigourney with the publication of her first books.
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In 1794, Daniel Wadsworth was married to Faith Trumbull, a daughter of US Senator and Governor of Connecticut, Jonathan Trumbull Jr.
12.
Daniel Wadsworth later became acquainted with her uncle, John Trumbull, one of the period's most celebrated historical painters.