biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1766–1839)
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| biography:
| Painter, playwright, and theatre manager, born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, USA. He began as a painter and went to London (1748) to study with Benjamin West, but on his return (c.1787) he took up writing Gothic romances, such as The Father (1789) and Fountainville Abbey (1795). He became attracted to the theatre, and in the ensuing decades wrote or adapted some 56 plays (about half of which were translations or adaptations of Continental writers). During 1796–1805 he also served as proprietor and manager of the John Street and Park theatres in New York City, where he produced many of his own plays, including Andre (1798), based on Major Andre's dealings with Benedict Arnold in the American Revolution. He worked to get the government to support the theatre to help lift it from its commercialism, and he tried to encourage indigenous American plays and actors over the prevailing Anglophile snobbery. For his many contributions, he would later become known as ‘the father of American drama’, but when his theatre work led to bankruptcy, he returned to painting, gaining a reputation with his portraits while maintaining his romantic approach in works such as ‘Count of Death’ (1818). He also wrote several histories and biographies, including the Life of Charles Brockden Brown (1815) and History of the American Theatre (1832). He was one of the founders of the National Academy of Design (1826) and wrote History of the Arts of Design in the United States (1834). |
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