Johann Mengels Culverhouse

Very little is known about the life of Johann Mengles Culverhouse. Born in Rotterdam, he lived for a time in The Hague and may have received his art training at the Düsseldorf Academy in Germany. About 1849 he went to New York. Culverhouse's life is chronicled mainly through exhibition records and paintings, of which about fifty are known. He must have achieved some degree of success during his lifetime, for his works were exhibited at a number of major venues, including both the American Art-Union and the National Academy of Design. Culverhouse apparently lived in Europe in the late 1850s and exhibited in Paris, Antwerp, and Amsterdam. In Syracuse, New York, during 1871 and 1872 he painted and sold a number of pictures, including a moonlight panorama of the city (Clinton Square, 1871; Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, New York). After 1878, however, Culverhouse's trail is lost. He may have died in the United States sometime in the 1890s; perhaps, as has been suggested, he died in his hometown.