- This article is about the artist. For the Kentucky politician, see Joseph
Clay Stiles Blackburn.
Joseph Blackburn, also known as Jonathan Blackburn, (dates of birth and death uncertain - see note below)
was an English portrait painter who worked mainly in Bermuda and in colonial America.
He seems to have been the son of a painter, and to have had a studio in Boston in
1750-1765; among his patrons were many important early American families, including the Apthorps,
Amorys, Bulfinches, Lowells, Ewings, Saltonstalls,
Winthrops, Winslows and Oties of
Boston.
Some of his portraits are in the possession of the public library of Lexington,
Massachusetts, and of the Massachusetts Historical Society, but most of them are privately owned and are scattered over
the country, the majority being in Boston. John Singleton Copley was his pupil,
and it is said that he finally left his studio in Boston, through jealousy of Copley's superior success. He was a good portrait
painter, and some of his pictures were long attributed to Copley.
Dates of birth and death
There is a degree of confusion about the dates of birth and death of Blackburn. The most common suggestion for year of death
is 1778 (see for instance the Encyclopedia Britannica and the American Artists Bluebook ([1])) whereas Microsoft
Encarta suggests 1774 ([2]). 1730 is usually posited as the year of birth but it is at best an estimate.
Some sources still give 1700-1765 as Blackburn's years. These most likely derive from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica,
published prior to Lawrence Park's review - "Joseph Blackburn - Portrait Painter," - printed in the Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian Society in 1922 which established many of the known works of Blackburn.
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