He has about 35 known canvases, most of which are based on Washington Irving's stories about Dutch New York, drawing inspiration from the Hudson Valley and from such English painters as William Hogarth, Isaac Cruikshank, James Gillray, Joseph Wright of Derby, and George Morland.
[4] Starting in 1823, he began creating paintings based on literary themes, including, his first two efforts, Dorothea and Don Quixote Imagines Melisendra’s Rescue by a Moor, both paintings based on the Miguel de Cervantes novel, Don Quixote; then following with Washington Irving's short stories Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle and James Fenimore Cooper's book The Pioneers.
[3] That incident, combined with two major cholera outbreaks in the area and a financial crash in the late 1830s, led Quidor to abandon New York.
[3] He moved to Quincy, Illinois, in 1837,[2][3] and, in 1844, purchased an $8,000 ($299,891.20 in 2022 dollars) farm, which he paid for by painting eight large religious canvases based on engravings of works by Benjamin West.
He simplified his compositions and used a narrower range of colors, which he thinned with varnish so that his stylized, nervously rendered figures nearly disappeared into hazy backgrounds.
Many of his works, such as The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, were inspired by the writings of Washington Irving.