GRANT, General Ulysses S. (1894/5)

Ulysses Simpson Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant on April 27, 1822 ) was an American politician, soldier, international statesman, and author, who served as the 18th President of the United States of America from 1869 to 1877. During the American Civil War Grant led the Union Army as its commanding general to victory over the Confederate States with the supervision of President Abraham Lincoln. He died on July 23, 1885. He was buried in a mausoleum at Riverside Drive, New York. A portrait of Grant by George P. A. Healy dated 1868 is in the Chicago Historical Society.

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Painted in 1894/5. This picture was borrowed by the Union League Club of Brooklyn on Saturday, April 27, 1895, the date of Grant’s Birthday, at the request of Stewart L. Woodford of the firm of Arnoux, Ritch & Woodford, 18, Wall Street, New York. Woodford had heard of this portrait through Robert J. Kimball, who in turn had been informed of the picture in the footnote of a letter to him by Frederick Dent Grant, General Grant’s son. (This footnote which reads as follows – ‘P.S. Mr. Muller Ury, an artist of some distinction, has just painted a very good picture of father which the Brooklyn League Club could borrow for the evening if they wished it. Mr. Ury’s studio is in the “Sherwood” corner of 57th St & 6th avenue. Yours truly, F.D.G.’ – was enclosed by Woodford in his letter of request to Muller-Ury [artist’s papers]). The picture was then moved by Kimball from the Club to the Loan Exhibition of the Rembrandt Club at the Pouch Mansion which took place from April 29, 1895 (cf. Brooklyn Citizen, May 1, 1895).

When this picture was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the following year the Washington Star, March 7, 1896, reported as follows:

‘A full-length portrait of Gen. U. S. Grant is now being exhibited in the Corcoran Gallery by the artist, A. Muller-Ury. It shows the great general     standing bareheaded outside his tent in the early morning, holding a field   glass in one hand, and a half-unfolded map in the other. It was on exhibition for three weeks in New York, and attracted considerable attention.’

According to the New York Herald, March 4, 1900, this portrait, valued at $10,000.00, was destroyed in a fire in the Windsor Hotel, New York, in 1899; it had been mentioned as hanging in the Windsor Hotel in the Mail & Express, New York, April 24, 1897 and, in the New York Journal, September 28, 1898 when Mrs. Grant was present at the Woman’s National War Relief Association’s reception.