Joseph Blackburn
Little is known of Joseph Blackburn’s biography; even his birth and death dates are unclear. He was likely born in England around 1730. As a young man, he must have trained as a painter because, by the time of his arrival in Bermuda in 1752, he was already offering his services as a portraitist. Some scholars have suggested that he might have worked in the studio of a more prominent artist, perhaps in London, painting draperies and backgrounds; they base this suggestion on Blackburn’s extraordinary talent for conveying the sheen of satin dresses and the delicate details of lace (Eldredge, Charles C., Barbara Babcock Millhouse, and Robert G. Workman. American Originals: Selections from Reynolda House Museum of American Art. New York: Abbeville Press [1990], p. 22).
After a year in Bermuda, Blackburn came to colonial America, settling in Newport, Rhode Island, and painting the gentry in that prosperous seaport. It was a propitious time to arrive in New England, as Smibert had died, Feke had left Boston, and Copley had not yet burst onto the scene as the portraitist of choice. The refined Rococo portrait style that Blackburn brought with him from England, marked by graceful informal poses and often by elegant outdoor settings, proved popular with the colonists, who were used to a stiffer and more formal style of portraiture. He thus enjoyed a steady business in commissions. From Newport, he went to Boston and then to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In each place, his services were much in demand. Some contemporary sources mention his affable and charming personality; he seems to have behaved much like the gentlemen whose patronage he sought (Stevens, William B., Jr. “Joseph Blackburn and his Newport Sitters, 1754-1756,” in Newport History 40, part 3 [Summer 1967], p. 101).
His most accomplished work is perhaps the portrait of Isaac Winslow and his Family from 1755, in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. In this group portrait, the prosperous merchant Isaac Winslow stands next to his wife and two daughters. They are shown in a classical garden that is certainly a product of the artist’s imagination or perhaps based on another source, as nothing so elaborate existed in the colonies at the time. The relaxed poses of the figures convey the sense of informal elegance that marked Blackburn’s style. The Winslows’ gestures call attention to their graceful hands; Blackburn was markedly skilled at rendering hands.
In 1763, Blackburn left the colonies for England, perhaps because he had increasingly found himself in competition with Copley for commissions. Because the competition in London was also fierce, and artists such as Reynolds and Gainsborough had long surpassed him in skill and style, Blackburn chose more provincial places to seek portrait commissions. Scholars have traced him, through his paintings, to southwestern England and Ireland. His last known portrait was of Hugh Jones in Monmouthshire in 1777 (see http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/tbio?tperson=968&type=a). The date and place of his death have been obscured by the passage of time, but his influence on colonial American portraiture, especially on Copley’s abilities to render textiles skillfully and to arrange figures artfully, has ensured that his reputation lived on.
Allison C. Slaby, 2011
