Dunlap, William

Dunlap, William (1766–1839),born in New Jersey, began his versatile career at 16 as a professional portrait painter, among his early subjects being George and Martha Washington. He returned to New York after three years of study in London under Benjamin West, but had only a moderate success as a painter. Inspired by the success of Royall Tyler's The Contrast, he wrote The Father; or, American Shandyism (1789), which was so successful that he continued to focus his attention on the drama. New plays from his pen appeared on the New York stage at least once a year, and these included Darby's Return (1789); Fatal Deception (1794), which was published as Leicester (1807); Fontainville Abbey (1795); and an opera, The Archers (1796). In 1796 he purchased a share in New York's Old American Company, and two years later became the sole owner of this unprofitable theatrical enterprise. He translated many popular French and German dramas, and his version of Kotzebue's The Stranger (1798) began a tremendous vogue for this dramatist, of which Dunlap took advantage by translating more than a dozen of his plays. His adaptations were frequently based on Schiller and other German dramatists, and he also drew heavily on French playwrights.

Although these works were popular, and although during this period Dunlap produced some of his own best plays, such as André (1798) and The Italian Father (1799), his theater failed and he went into bankruptcy (1805). After a season as an itinerant miniaturist, five years as a theatrical manager, and an attempt to publish a magazine, The Monthly Recorder (1813), he returned to his career as a painter. Meanwhile he wrote a Life of Charles Brockden Brown (1815), poorly organized but the primary source of biographical information about the novelist. In 1821 Dunlap began a series of large show canvases much indebted to Benjamin West, and he helped found the National Academy of Design (1826), where for a time he served as professor of historical painting. His History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (2 vols., 1834) is an indispensable authority, much of its information being based on firsthand knowledge. The History of the American Theatre (1832), the first account of our stage, is important for furnishing personal information about actors as well as material about early theaters and plays. Dunlap also wrote a temperance novel, Thirty Years Ago; or, The Memoirs of a Water Drinker (1836); a dialogue History of New York for Schools (1837), dealing with events up to 1789; and a History of the New Netherlands, Province of New York, and State of New York (2 vols., 1839–40), a careful work about the period before the adoption of the Constitution. He was the first American to make a serious business of writing for the stage, and of the 65 plays listed in his bibliography, 30 are original. Several of them have been republished by the Dunlap Society.