John Smibert (March 24, 1688 – April 2, 1751) was a Scottish-born painter who specialised in portrait painting and was the first academically trained artist to work in British America.
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. From 1702 to 1709, he was apprenticed to a house painter and plasterer in Edinburgh. On moving to London in 1709 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. 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, and then settled in London where he worked as a portrait painter from 1722 until 1728.
From Top to Bottom:
c. 1739 Self-Portrait
The Bermuda Group (Dean Berkeley and His Entourage), begun in 1728, finished 1739. Yale University Art Gallery
Advertisement for “John Smibert, painter, sells all sorts of colours, dry or ground, with oils and brushes. ... Wholesale or retail at reasonable rates, at his house in Queen-Street, between the Town-House and the orange tree, Boston,” 1734
Plaque at Granary Burying Ground in Boston commemorating Smibert
Portrait of Edward Nightengale, ca.1722-1724
Benjamin Morland, oil on canvas, 1724. Yale Center for British Art
Elizabeth Davenport (Mrs. William Dudley), 1729, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Colonel James Otaway, oil on canvas, 1724. Royal Sussex Regiment Museum
Paul Mascarene, 1729 (LACMA)
Edward Winslow, c. 1730-1731, Yale University Art Gallery.
Samuel Sewall, 1729, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Francis Brinley, c. 1729, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Portrait of Edmund Quincy, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
1730 portrait of Thomas Hancock in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
Sir John Rushout, 4th Baronet
The Rev John Cotton 1690-1757 By Smibert
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, Province House (Nova Scotia)
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