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ing agreeable satisfaction as he has heretofore done to
Gentlemen
and Ladies in London."
His notices continued to appear until 1772, when he seems
to
have abandoned the practice of art and opened a paint store, selling
among other items, "yellow oker, prusian blue, and verdigrease,"
and finally, in 1775, comes a notice for the payment of debts due him
to Judith Kilburn, his executrix. Similar notices of other painters
were published subsequently, and other names appear in the old
records, some of them connected with the beginnings of West and
Copley; but oblivion has swallowed up the works of most of them.
The neglect is not unmerited. The work is poor and
without
artistic interest, though the portraits are often the only likenesses
we have of men important in their day, and the costumes are amus-
ing. Bad as they are, the technique usually suggests Continental
work rather than English, which is natural, for English painting was
hardly begun, and the wandering craftsmen in America got what
ideals they had from men like Knelldr and Lely. Most of them
probably learned their trade before coming to America, and renewed
their artistic inspiration from such prints and portraits as they
could
get a sight of. The general result was about what one might expect
an unskilful sign painter to produce when attempting to copy Sir
Godfrey Kneller from memory.
Of one man we know something more. Jonathan B. Black-
burn came to Boston about 1750 and remained some fifteen years.
Mr. Perkins has been unable to trace his early life, but says that
"there was a travelling artist of the same name about a generation
before him, and he may have been his son, but there is no proof of
it." He gives a list of some fifty pictures by him which are still
pre-
served, including a number of full lengths and two family groups,
and surmises that he remained in Boston until his pupil or imitator,
Copley, had begun to paint better than himself. Blackburn, how-
ever he may have got his training, was a respectable painter and
might fairly rival Smybert or the youthful Copley. His portraits
are rigid and the modelling dry, like those of his contemporaries,
but they are serious work, and he sometimes shows a feeling for
color in delicate grays and quiet tones which is entirely his own, and
he was, moreover, capable of composing a group fairly well.
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