John Smibert (rarely spelled Smybert; /ˈsmaɪbət/;[1] 24 March 1688 – 2 April 1751)[2] was a Scottish-born painter, regarded as the first academically trained artist to live and work regularly in British America.[3]
Born in Edinburgh on 24 March 1688, Smibert was the second youngest of six children of Alison and John Smibert, a litster, or wool dyer.[4] From 1702–1709, he was apprenticed to a house painter and plasterer in Edinburgh. On moving to London in 1709[5] 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.[5]
Smibert travelled to Italy from 1719 to 1722 to copy old masters and then settled in London where he worked as a portrait painter from 1722-1728.[5]
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[6] who, in 1728, enticed Smibert to accompanied 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. He lived at the corner of Brattle Street and Queen-Street.[7][8] He belonged to the Scots Charitable Society of Boston.
Bishop George Berkeley 1727The Bermuda Group (Dean Berkeley and His Entourage), begun in 1728, finished 1739. Yale University Art GallerySir John Rushout, Bt by John SmibertPlaque at Granary Burying Ground in Boston commemorating Smibert
In 1728 he began painting "Dean George Berkeley and His Family," also called "The Bermuda group", now in the Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University, a group of eight figures; it is maintained that the person farthest to the left is actually the artist himself. He 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.
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.[9]
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 an unmarked grave in the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.
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.
References
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
This articleincorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Smybert, John". Encyclopædia Britannica (11thed.). Cambridge University Press.
Further reading
Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Smibert.
Primary sources
Smibert, John (1969). The Notebook of John Smibert. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society. OCLC6380– via the Internet Archive.
Vertue, George (1934). "The Note-Books of George Vertue Relating to Artists and Collections in England (III)". The Walpole Society. 22. whole issue. JSTORi40086509.
Deane, Charles; Perkins, Augustus T.; Wendell Holmes, Oliver (1878). "December Meeting, 1878". Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 17: 380–475. JSTOR25079537. See pp. 385–399 for A. T. Perkins' reports, "Portraits by Blackburn" and "Portraits by Smibert"{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
Rebora, Carol; etal. (1995). John Singleton Copley in America (exhibition catalogue). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, H. N. Abrams. ISBN0-87099-744-0. OCLC1244862408– via the Internet Archive.
Reference works
Bénézit, Emmanuel (2006) [first published in French in 1911–1923]. Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Vol.12. Paris: Gründ. pp.1349. ISBN2-7000-3082-6 – via the Internet Archive.
Cust, Lionel Henry (1897). "Smibert, John". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol.52. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p.405.
Kalfatovic, Martin R. (1999). "Smibert, John". In Garraty, John Arthur; Carnes, Marc Christopher (eds.). American National Biography. Vol.20. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. pp.118–120. ISBN0-19-512799-4. OCLC1028044182– via the Internet Archive.
Saunders, Richard H. (1996). "Smibert, John". In Turner, Jane (ed.). The Dictionary of Art. Vol.28. New York: Grove's Dictionaries. pp.869–871. ISBN1-884446-00-0. OCLC1033666104– via the Internet Archive.
Saunders, Richard H. (2004). "Smibert, John". In Matthew, H. C. G. & Harrison, Brian (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol.50. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. p.1001. ISBN0-19-861400-4. OCLC1035757202– via the Internet Archive.
Sizer, Theodore (1935). "Smibert, John". In Malone, Dumas (ed.). Dictionary of American Biography. Vol.17. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp.228–230. OCLC1042927728– via the Internet Archive.
Vollmer, Hans, ed. (1937). "Smibert (Smybert), John". Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler (in German). Vol.31. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann. pp.158–159.
John Singleton Copley in America, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on John Smibert (see index)
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