Ezra Ames (1768-1836)
The Fondey Family
Oil on canvas, 1803
AIHA Collection: Gift of Richard C. and Marjorie D. Rockwell

Ezra Ames was Albany's premier portraitist for more than 40 years, with over 700 recorded pictures. In addition, he painted occasional landscapes, still lifes, and history pictures, and was active as an engraver as well. AIHA has the largest holding of Ames's work, numbering 66 paintings and 27 miniatures.

The Fondey Family remains one of the artist's most ambitious works. John Fondey Jr. is shown with his wife Cornelia and their four children. Ames recorded the identities and ages of the subjects of the painting in an amazing piece of trompe l'oeil work, the curling paper in the upper right, which appears to hang down in front of the picture. John Fondey sold looking glasses, fiddles, china, glass and earthenware from a firm on Court Street in Albany. The AIHA collection contains a number of other pieces originally belonging to the Fondey family.

Ariaantie Coeymans Verplanck

by Nehemia Partridge

A Sculptor's Studio

by Tompkins H. Matteson

The Fondey Family

by Ezra Ames

Still Life: Fruit in a Classical Setting

by John Vanderlyn, Jr.

The Fist

by Alice Morgan Wright

Margin of Silence

by Kay Sage

Thoroughbreds

by Walter L. Greene

Bust of Young Girl

by Charles Calverley

Library at Arbor Hill (Olcott Interior)

by Walter Launt Palmer

Emma Turner Banks

by Charles Loring Elliot