patroon

1. (US) One of the landowning Dutch grandees of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, especially after it became a British possession renamed as New York.Examples: "Dr. Tucker accompanied us on our return; and we made a call on General Van Rensselaer. He is the Patroon, or Lord of the Manor here; and is considered the greatest landholder in the United States."; "In the United States the labourer is a freeman, lives on good substance, and being an honest man, neither fears nor envies the richest patroon about him."; "One of the earliest “schools” of American painting, the Hudson Valley patroon painters, has often been considered to have derived from seventeenth-century English portraiture. Portraits of English aristocrats appeared to Dutch patroons as displays of the kind of social status they aspired to in their new country. […] Frequently overlooked in the discussion of the appeal of British portraiture to Dutch patroons is the fact that English portraiture of the seventeenth century was, in fact, a direct descendant of the Netherlandish portrait tradition."