Bequest of Cora V. R. Catlin, 1915, in the name of her brother, the late N. W. Stuyvesant Catlin, great-great-great-grandson of Governor Stuyvesant.
The above three paintings were brought over by Governor Stuyvesant in 1647.
THE BRYAN COLLECTION
[THOMAS J. BRYAN]
Thomas Jefferson Bryan was the son of Guy Bryan and Martha Matlock, his wife. He was born at "Spring Hill," Philadelphia, Pa., about 1800, and died at sea, May 14, 1870, on board the French steamship "Lafayette," while on his way to New York, four days out from Havre, France.
Mr. Bryan graduated at Harvard University in 1823 and studied law, but he never practiced his profession, as he had an adequate inheritance.
Much of his time was given to foreign travels in forming a valuable collection of paintings. For a time this collection, known as the Bryan Gallery of Christian Art, was displayed on the walls of a spacious room in a house on the corner of Broadway and Thirteenth Street, where an admission fee of twenty-five cents was charged to view the paintings, Mr. Bryan himself being the custodian in charge. He next deposited them in the Cooper Union, and in 1867 he deeded the entire collection to the New York Historical Society, which he catalogued, arranged and added to from time to time until his death in 1870.
