page_title: Robert Donaldson Jr.
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Donaldson Jr. / Career
caption_attribution_description: Book&#160;; drawing&#160;; Ornament and Architecture; Books
context_page_description: Robert Donaldson Jr. was an American banker and patron of the arts.
context_section_description: After returning to Fayetteville, he built the Lafayette Hotel, in anticipation of the March 4 and 5, 1825 visit by General Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette to the town named in his honor on during Lafayette's grand tour of the United States.
  In the early 1820s, he relocated to New York City and began working as a banker.  He returned to North Carolina in 1828 where he married, and with his wife and younger brother, James, and two sisters, they all moved to New York City.  Once in New York, he became a patron of young artists and writers of the Romantic movement.  In his 1837 book, Rural Residences, Donaldson's friend and architect, Alexander Jackson Davis, acknowledged Donaldson's support by describing him as "an ardent amateur of the rural arts." Downing also dedicated his 1847 book, Cottage Residences: Or, A Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage Villas, and their Gardens and Grounds adapted to North America. to Donaldson.   He was friends with many prominent painters of the Hudson River School, including Asher Brown Durand, owned several important artworks including Gypsying Party by Leslie, The School of Athens, a copy of Raphael's fresco made by Morse for Donaldson in 1831, some Italian paintings, portraits, and several Dutch landscapes.
caption: The cover of Andrew Jackson Downing's novel, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape featuring Dondaldson's home, Blithewood.
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