Portrait of a Gentleman

c. 1760

Joseph Blackburn

Painter, British, active 1752/1777

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned man with rosy cheeks looks at us in front of a window opening in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s body is angled to our left, but he turns his head to look at us with blue eyes under smooth brows. His chestnut-brown hair is brushed off his high forehead, which slopes down to a wide nose, notably flushed cheeks, and closed pink lips. A white cravat is knotted at his throat, and his left hand, to our right, rests on his hip so it pulls back the dark brown coat he wears. The coat has flaring sleeves and silver embroidery. Translucent ivory-white cuffs of his shirt rest along the backs of his hands. His long aqua-blue vest has a floral brocade pattern and elaborate embroidery of flowers and leaves down the buttoned opening of the front, around the scalloped pocket we see, and along the bottom hem, which comes to about mid-thigh. The man holds a black tricorner hat in his right hand, to our left, by that hip. Shimmering fern-green fabric hangs in folds and swags along the left edge of the painting in front of an ash-brown wall. The rectangular window opening is to our left.  A volute climbs up the lower right corner of the opening, its scrolling bulk resembling a snail’s shell. A twilight sky glows over a few treetops in the landscape beyond. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the front of the windowsill. Text reads, “I: Blackburn Pinx.”

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A lavishly attired gentleman strikes a formal pose in a dark interior enlivened by blue drapery at the right and a window featuring an elaborate volute at the left. His rosy cheeks and the tricorner hat he grasps in his right hand suggest that he has just returned from a sunset stroll. The brown coat sports an unusual scalloped cuff, a style called à la marinière or mariners’ cuff, which was quite fashionable in England from at least the 1730s into the 1760s. The man’s left hand, placed assuredly on his hip, draws this coat back, as if to show off the sumptuous waistcoat and gold watch fob underneath. The waistcoat’s light blue silk is accented by a delicate, loom-woven subpattern and elaborate silver embroidery. Blackburn rendered this clothing in such remarkable detail that he must have worked from actual garments.

Little is known about this handsome portrait except that it was painted by the English-born Joseph Blackburn. The painting’s sitter and place of execution are unidentified, and its estimated date is based on the gentleman’s costume and the work’s relationship to other oils by the enigmatic Blackburn, who worked in Bermuda, New England, and Britain. Supporting the painting’s possible English origin are two facts: its first recorded appearance was in that country around 1956, and it bears a relatively large signature characteristic of Blackburn’s work there. More study is required to remedy the lack of information about this portrait in particular, and Blackburn’s biography more generally.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 62


Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(John Nicholson Gallery, New York), by 1956.[1] (Charles Childs, Boston); (Miss Eunice Chambers, American Paintings, Hartsville, SC), by 1962; [2] (Osborne Gallery/Tribune Gallery, New York); purchased 31 October 1966 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] John Nicholson mentions the painting in a letter dated 20 February 1956 to Horace Hotchkiss, Corcoran Gallery of Art. The painting was first exhibited at Nicholson Gallery in 1958.
[2] Letter dated 9 October 1962 from Miss Eunice Chambers to Dorothy W. Phillips, Curator, Corcoran Gallery of Art, offering the painting. According to a note on the back of a black and white photograph at the Frick Art Reference Library Supply File, “Miss Chambers says she got this from Charles Childs, dlr, Boston.” The portrait is also included on the "List of American Paintings owned by Miss Eunice Chambers,Hartsville, SC" sent by Miss Chambers to the Frick Art Reference Library in 1966, in which she writes that she sold the painting to the Osborne Gallery.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1963

  • Carolina Charter Tercentenary Exhibition, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh,1963, no. 3.

1976

  • Corcoran [The American Genius]. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1976, unnumbered catalogue.

2005

  • Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, 2005-2007, checklist no.1.

2008

  • The American Evolution: A History through Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2008, unpublished checklist.

2013

  • American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013-28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

2011

  • Miles, Ellen G. "Joseph Blackurn, Portrait of a Gentleman." In Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Washington, 2011: 48-49, 254, repro.

Inscriptions

center left: I: Blackburn Pinx

Wikidata ID

Q20178121


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