Joseph Blackburn Biography

Joseph Blackburn (c.1730-1787) was an English painter who worked mainly in British North America. His notable works include portraits of Hugh Jones (circa 1777) and Colonel Theodore Atkinson (circa 1760).

He seems to have been the son of a painter, and to have had a studio in Boston from 1755 until 1765; among his patrons were many important early American families, including the Apthorps, Amorys, Bulfinches, Lowells, Ewings, Saltonstalls, Winthrops, Winslows and Otises of Boston. Blackburn spent time in Bermuda (1752-1753), Newport (1754), Boston (1755-1758), and Portsmouth (1758-1762). In late 1763 he returned to London and painted portraits in southwestern England, Wales, and Dublin between 1768 and 1777. Approximately one hundred fifty of Blackburn's portraits survive. He excelled at painting textiles.

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 USA, the majority being in Boston. One portrait, of Elizabeth Browne Rogers, completed in 1761, is part of the permanent American art collection at Reynolda House Museum of American Art located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

John Singleton Copley was Blackburn's pupil, and it is said that he finally left his studio in Boston, through jealousy of Copley's superior success. His pictures were long attributed to Copley.

Art historian Lawrence Park authored, and the American Antiquarian Society published, the first biographical and critical study of Blackburn in 1923, restoring this long-overlooked artist to the attention of scholars and connoisseurs.