Museum of the City of New York

A Tour of the Museum of the City of New York

“Portrait of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton” by Ralph Earl
“Olivia Peyton Murray Cutting” by Alexandre Cabanel
“Unveiling The Statue of Liberty” by Edward Moran

Highlights of the Museum of the City of New York

“Portrait of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton” by Ralph Earl

This “Portrait of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton” by Ralph Earl portrays Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (1757 – 1854), the wife of Alexander Hamilton, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and Founding Father.

In 1787, Elizabeth sat for this portrait while Earl was being held in debtors’ prison.

Alexander had heard of Earl’s predicament and asked if Elizabeth might be willing to sit for him, to allow him to make some money and eventually buy his way out of prison, which he later did.

Elizabeth Schuyler was born in Albany, New York, and her family came from a wealthy and politically influential family. Her family was among the wealthy Dutch landowners who had settled around Albany in the mid-1600s.

In 1780 Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth met during the middle of the American Revolutionary War and married in the same year. Together they had eight children.

“Olivia Peyton Murray Cutting” by Alexandre Cabanel

“Olivia Peyton Murray Cutting” by Alexandre Cabanel was painted ten years after Olivia Peyton Murray’s (1855-1949) married William Bayard Cutting (1850-1912), a member of New York’s merchant aristocracy.

The couple was members of New York’s “Gilded Age,” a period from the 1860s until the early 1900s when wealth was accumulated, concentrated, and flaunted as never before in America.

Olivia was an American debutante of the 1870s, confident in her place at the highest level of society.

She was a descendant of landowning ancestors mentioned in the Doomsday Book who owned swaths of Surrey, and whose later descendants owned large tracts of land in Manhattan.

In 1877 she married Cutting, and like the Murrays, the Cuttings had been in America since the 18th century and well established. Together they had four children.

“Unveiling The Statue of Liberty” by Edward Moran

“Unveiling The Statue of Liberty” by Edward Moran depicts October 28, 1886, when thousands of spectators gathered for the dedication of The Statue of Liberty.

Moran captures the moment when the assembled warships fired a 21-gun salute to welcome the President for the dedication ceremony. Ships flying French and American flags fill the harbor as smoke from the gun salute rolls across the scene.

The Statue of Liberty is a colossal sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. The copper statue, a gift from France to the people of the United States, was designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and built by Gustave Eiffel.

The statue was made in France, shipped in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on the island. New York’s first ticker-tape parade celebrated the statue’s completion, and a dedication ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland.

Museum of the City of New York

Name: Museum of the City of New York
City: New York City
Country: United States
Founded: 1923
Type: History museum
Location: 1220–1227 Fifth Avenue, New York City, U.S.

A Tour of American Museums

New York Museums
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art or MET
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
- Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum
- Neue Galerie New York
- The Cloisters
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- American Museum of Natural History
- Museum of the City of New York
- New-York Historical Society
- Frick Collection
- Met Breuer
- Rubin Museum of Art
- Brooklyn Museum

Washington, D.C. Museums
- National Gallery of Art
- National Museum of American History
- National Air and Space Museum
- National Museum of African American History and Culture
- National Museum of Natural History
- National Portrait Gallery
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- The Phillips Collection
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- International Spy Museum