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shadows black and without transparency, but the drawing is
good,
and the character of the different persons well given, with a cer-
tain liveliness and animation in their expression. This, which is
one of the earliest of his works in America (he is said to have
begun it, or at least the studies for it, during the voyage), seems
to have met with general approbation, for he had many orders and
painted a long line of divines, magistrates, and justices with their
wives and children, of unequal merit, and (although his reputation
has probably suffered from the reckless attribution to him of the work
of inferior men) mostly stiff in pose and labored in treatment. Yet
his portraits were by far the best executed in the country up to the
time of his death, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for the
sincerity with which he has preserved for us the likenesses of our
early worthies, men like Jonathan Edwards or John Endicott of
Massachusetts, and the others who out of their unskilfully drawn
eyes stare at us stiffly from his canvases. Much of his work is
preserved, and Perkins give's a list of thirty-six pictures by him
which he considers authentic.
Smybert died in 1751, and from that time the number of
painters
in America multiplied, though their merit did not increase. Smy-
bert's son Nathaniel followed his father's profession and showed
promise, but died young, in 1756.
John Greenwood was also a contemporary, and all over the
colo-
nies there were artists like Theus, whose name Dunlap has preserved
and who painted portraits in South Carolina " certainly as early as
1750," and Robert Feke, of an old New England family, who worked
about the same time. All of these did work that, without being of
great merit, still was not grotesque, and even had some dignity and
beauty. In the-New York Gazette of July, 1754, there was
published
a notice to the effect that" Lawrence Kilburn, Limner
"Just arrived from London with Capt. Miller, hereby acquaints
all
Gentlemen and Ladies inclined to favor him in having their pictures
drawn, that he don't doubt of pleasing them in taking a true Like-
ness, and finishing the Drapery in a proper manner, as also in the
Choice of Attitudes suitable to each Person's Age and Sex, and giv-
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