Quidor, John

Quidor, John

(1801–81) painter; born in Tappan, N.Y. His family moved to New York City (c. 1811), he painted signs for fire coaches, and he studied with John Wesley Jarvis (c. 1814–22). He lived on a farm in Illinois (c. 1847), where he painted religious themes; later he moved to Jersey City. His work is surrealistic and based on the literary themes of James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving, as in Ichabod Crane Pursued by the Headless Horseman (c. 1828).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.