“Charles A. McCaffrey Tugboat, 1917”

Oil on Canvas

16.5 x 22.5 unframed

22 x 22.5 framed

Signed F. Leon Hunter 1917, lower right

Provenance:

McConnell Estate Tower Hill Farms NJ

Biography:

Frederick Leo Hunter (1862-1943) The following represents the limited information that we have assembled so far on this artist. His date of birth is occasionally given as 1858; we have relied upon information from the New York Historical Society for the date of 1862.

Exhibited at the New York Etching Club, 1888. Although Hunter was noted for his New York City images, he is reported, like most of the landscape artists of the period, to have traveled each summer (and obviously in winter too) searching for new subject matter in “exotic” locales in Canada and Europe.

He is perhaps better known for his etchings, many of which have docks, quays and waterfront subjects with sailing vessels very prominently depicted. However, he produced a somewhat extensive repertoire of oil paintings, including ships portraits – some historical views on Long Island Sound-and pastural scenes.  Frederick Hunter lived at Ossining, Cold Spring on Hudson, New York.

Exhibition venues included the National Academy of Design, 1881-86; Brooklyn Art Association, 1881-86; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1881-82, 1884.

Tower Hill Farms is the estate that belonged to the son of Isidor and Ida Straus. In 1888 Isidor and Nathan Straus acquired a percentage of R.H. Macy and Company, and by 1896 they had gained full ownership of the department store. Isidor served for a short time in the U.S. House of Representatives (1894–95) and in later years engaged in philanthropic works. He and his wife, Ida, perished aboard the ocean liner Titanic in 1912. (Although offered a seat in a lifeboat, Isidor refused to disobey the order of women and children first. Ida, in turn, would not leave her husband, reportedly saying, “Where you go, I go.”) Their son Jesse Isidor Straus became president of Macy’s in 1919 and was succeeded in that office by his son Jack Isidor Straus, who served as company president from 1939 to 1956.  After the Death on the Titanic, their son built the Tower Hill Farm in 1929. In 1949 James and Dorothy McConnell purchased the estate from the Straus family and has remained in the family until today.