Daniel Huntington was born into a distinguished New York family and followed tradition by enrolling in Yale. After just one semester, however, he was disciplined for taking part in a student riot and transferred to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. A visiting artist at the college noticed Huntington’s talent for painting and encouraged him to join the studio of inventor and artist Samuel F. B. Morse. Huntington traveled to Italy several times during the late 1830s and 1840s, where he was inspired by ancient religious art and created many paintings of idealized figures. Back in New York, he became one of the city’s leading painters, and in 1849 a group of his supporters proposed a retrospective exhibition---the first one-man show in the city for a living artist
