John Smibert
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox artist John Smibert (24 March 1688 – 2 April 1751) was a Scottish-born painter who was the first academically trained artist to work in British America.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
CareerEdit
Smibert was born in Edinburgh on 24 March 1688, the second youngest of six children of Alison and John Smibert, a litster, or wool dyer.Template:Sfn From 1702 to 1709, he was apprenticed to a house painter and plasterer in Edinburgh. On moving to London in 1709<ref name="Saunders">Richard H. Saunders, John Smibert: Colonial America's first portrait painter, Yale University Press, 1995.</ref> he worked as a coach painter and copyist.
1713-1716, he studied under Godfrey Kneller at the Great Queen Street Academy, then returned to Edinburgh, seeking work as portraitist.<ref name="Saunders" /> Smibert travelled to Italy from 1719 to 1722 to copy old masters, including some in the collection of Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany,<ref>Skinner, Basil (1966), Scots in Italy in the 18th Century, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, p. 30</ref> and then settled in London where he worked as a portrait painter from 1722 until 1728.<ref name="Saunders" />
Smibert became a member of the Rose and Crown Club and made a sketch for a group portrait of its members, including George Vertue, John Wootton, Thomas Gibson, Bernard Lens III, and others.
Among his London portraits is one of Bishop Berkeley<ref name=DNB00>Template:Harvnb</ref> who, in 1728, enticed Smibert to accompany him to America, with the intention of becoming professor of fine arts in the college which Berkeley was planning to found in Bermuda. The college, however, was never established, and Smibert settled in Boston, where he married in 1730.<ref name="EB1911">{{#if: |
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}}{{#ifeq: ||}}</ref> He lived at the corner of Brattle Street and Queen-Street.<ref>Weekly Rehearsal, Oct. 21, 1734; May 26, 1735</ref><ref>David Kruh. Always something doing: Boston's infamous Scollay Square, rev. ed. Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 1999; p.34.</ref> He belonged to the Scots Charitable Society of Boston.
In 1728, he began painting Dean George Berkeley and His Entourage, also called The Bermuda Group, which became one of the most influential New England portraits.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It was commissioned by John Wainright, a patron of George Berkeley, and depicts the members of the planned expedition to Bermuda. The painting, now in the Yale University Art Gallery, includes Berkeley at the right, Wainwright seated at left, and Smibert standing at the far left.<ref>Yale University Art Gallery. Retrieved 12 March 2023.</ref>
Smibert painted portraits of Jonathan Edwards and Judge Edmund Quincy (in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston), Mrs Smibert, Peter Faneuil and Governor John Endecott (in the Massachusetts Historical Society), John Lovell (Memorial Hall, Harvard University), and probably one of Sir William Pepperrell; and examples of his works are owned by Harvard and Yale Universities, by Bowdoin College, by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and by the New England Historical and Genealogical Society.<ref name="EB1911"/>
In 1734, Smibert opened a shop where he sold paint, other artist's supplies, and prints. In his studio above the shop, he displayed casts and copies of Old Masters that he had painted in Europe. This collection, which Richard Saunders has termed "America's first art gallery", provided much of the early artistic education for Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and John Trumbull.<ref name="OAO">John Smibert, Oxford Art Online</ref>
Between 1740 and 1742, he served as architect for the original Faneuil Hall, which he designed in the style of an English country market. The hall burned down in 1761 but was restored, and then in 1806 greatly expanded and modified by Charles Bulfinch.
His son Nathaniel was also a painter. Smibert lies in Tomb 62 in the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.Template:Citation needed
Selected worksEdit
- EdwardNightengale ca1723 byJohnSmibert DallasMuseumArt.jpg
Portrait of Edward Nightengale, ca.1722-1724
- John Smibert - Benjamin Moreland, High Master of St. Paul's School - Google Art Project.jpg
Benjamin Morland, oil on canvas, 1724. Yale Center for British Art
- 1729 ElizabethDavenport byJohnSmibert MFABoston.jpeg
Elizabeth Davenport (Mrs. William Dudley), 1729, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- Colonel Charles Otway.jpg
Colonel James Otaway, oil on canvas, 1724. Royal Sussex Regiment Museum
- WLA lacma Smibert Scotland portrait of Paul Mascarene.jpg
Portrait of Major General Paul Mascarene, 1729 (LACMA)
- SamuelSewall.jpg
- Edward Winslow by John Smibert.jpeg
Edward Winslow, c. 1730-1731, Yale University Art Gallery.
- Francis Brinley MET DT53.jpg
Francis Brinley, c. 1729, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- 1737 EdmundQuincy byJohnSmibert MFABoston.jpeg
Portrait of Edmund Quincy, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- Thomas Hancock portrait.jpg
1730 portrait of Thomas Hancock in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
- John Smibert - Sir John Rushout, Bt. - Google Art Project.jpg
Sir John Rushout, Bt by John Smibert
- John Cotton by Smibert.jpg
The Rev John Cotton 1690-1757 By Smibert
- Colonel Paul Dudley Sargent. 1745-1827 (1920) (14597859800).jpg
Catherine Winthrop Sargent, married 1744 as the second wife of Col. Epes Sargent (soldier), from a portrait by Smybert which is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- Malachy Salter.jpg
ReferencesEdit
Further readingEdit
- Primary sources
- General studies
- Additional notes
- Reference works
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External linksEdit
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- John Singleton Copley in America, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on John Smibert (see index)