1 / 1

download image
This image is in the public domain. You can copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes. Learn more about our image policies.

Joseph Blackburn

A Military Officer, 1756

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 77.5 x 63.6 cm (30 1/2 x 25 1/16 in.)

framed: 93.7 x 79.7 x 6 cm (36 7/8 x 31 3/8 x 2 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1947.17.25

Artists / Makers

Joseph Blackburn (painter) British, active 1752/1777

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

lower left on painted spandrel: I Blackburn Pinxt 1756.

Provenance

(André E. Rueff, Brooklyn, N.Y.); sold 5 January 1924 through (Art House, Inc., New York) to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[1] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1947 to NGA.

[1] Letter from André Rueff, 5 January 1924, to C. J. Dearden, President of Art House (Clarke files, in NGA curatorial files). The name of the seller and the date of purchase are also recorded in a copy of Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke (Philadelphia, 1928) annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library). According to the provenance provided by Rueff, which lacks documentation, the portrait was given by the sitter to a Colonel Thayer of the British army and later descended in the Adair family, including Esther Latham Adair, Alice Adair, James Adair (d. 1914), and his brother William of Jersey City, from whom Rueff acquired it. Confirmation of this provenance has not been possible. Lawrence Park, Joseph Blackburn, A Colonial Portrait Painter, with a Descriptive List of his Works, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1923: 6, noted that the portrait had come "to light about two years ago." John Hill Morgan and Henry Wilder Foote, An Extension of Lawrence Park's Descriptive List of the Work of Joseph Blackburn, Worcester, MA, 1937: 48, wrote that William Adair, of 34 Grant Avenue, Jersey City, said that he was a descendant of an Adair family of Boston, from whom he inherited the portrait. The only part of the story that can be documented is that William Adair lived at the Grant Avenue address; see R. L. Polk and Co.'s Jersey City Directory, 1925-1926.

Associated Names

Art House, Inc.
Clarke, Thomas Benedict
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
Rueff, André E.

Exhibition History

1924: Exhibition of the Earliest Known Portraits of Americans by Painters of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, The Union League Club, New York, March 1924, no. 21, as General Joshua Winslow.

1928: Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928-1931, unnumbered and unpaginated catalogue, as General Joshua Winslow.

1989: Extended loan for use by Ambassador Maynard Glitman, U.S. Embassy residence, Brussels, Belgium, 1989-1991.

Bibliography

1923: Park, Lawrence. Joseph Blackburn, A Colonial Portrait Painter, with a Descriptive List of his Works Worcester, Massachusetts, 1923: 61.

1924: Exhibition of the Earliest Known Portraits of Americans by Painters of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Exh. cat. The Union League Club, New York, 1924: no. 21, as General Joshua Winslow.

1928: Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, unnumbered, as General Joshua Winslow.

1929: Bayley, Frank W. Five Colonial Artists of New England. Boston, 1929: 135 repro., as General John Winslow.

1930: Bolton, Theodore and Harry Lorin Binsse. "An American Artist of Formula: Joseph Blackburn." The Antiquarian 15 (November 1930): 92, as General Joshua Winslow.

1937: Morgan, John Hill and Henry Wilder Foote. An Extension of Lawrence Park's Descriptive List of the Work of Joseph Blackburn. Worcester, Massachusetts, 1937: 47-49, no. 126, as Lieutenant Joshua Winslow II.

1945: Baker, C. H. Collins. "Notes on Joseph Blackburn and Nathaniel Dance." Huntington Library Quarterly 9, no. 1 (November 1945): 41.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 16, repro.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 28, repro.

1981: Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 18, 21, repro. 19.

1995: Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 11-13, color repro. 12.