John Younie Luyster

Descended from a Dutch family that settled near the Hudson River in the mid-1700s, John Younie Luyster was born July 3, 1828, and lived in LaGrange, New York. He died September 6, 1886, and is buried with his parents, children, and wife Sarah in the graveyard of New Hackensack Dutch Reformed Church, near present-day LaGrangeville. Posing in a "grown-up" suit, the young Luyster is supplied with several details suggestive of childhood: school books, strawberries, and a faithful pet dog. Like other itinerant folk painters of his day, Ammi Phillips repeatedly used these and other attributes to enliven his many portraits of children. Phillips set his subjects in simple, well-designed arrangements, his crisp outlines and unmodulated colors clearly related to his work as a sign painter. The subjects of his finest portraits, including ten-year-old Luyster, were his own neighbors in Duchess County, New York, and the nearby communities of Kent and Sharon in Connecticut.

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