(1815 - 1865)
David Gilmour Blythe was active/lived in Pennsylvania, Ohio. David Blythe is known for satirical-genre painting, portrait, still life.
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Biography from the Archives of askART
A leading satiric genre painter of his time, David Blythe did work that
often commented on the American court system and also depicted
poverty-stricken street children. He was born in East Liverpool,
Ohio to Irish and Scottish parents. He had little formal art
training but at age 16, apprenticed to Joseph Woodwell, a woodcarver
from Pittsburgh. He also observed artists' work in a local
gathering place owned by J.J. Gillespie.
Biography from The Columbus Museum of Art, Georgia
From 1837 to 1840, he
was a ship's carpenter and traveled to Boston and the West Indies and
then became an itinerant portrait painter from 1841 to 1845. He
traveled throughout Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio and during this time
began painting scenes of city life. This work, which was humorous
and satiric, contrasted greatly with his solemn, primitive portraits.
1846, he settled in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, married, wrote poems for
the local newspaper, and painted from his studio that he called the
"rat's nest." Prone to depression and alcoholism, he struggled
throughout his life with these afflictions, especially when his wife
died after one year of marriage. He then dedicated himself to
painting, completing a 300-foot panorama of the Western Pennsylvania
mountains. In 1851, he went on tour with that work through
Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He also did an 8-foot high statue
of Lafayette for the Fayette County Courthouse in Pennsylvania.
of the paintings he did between 1854 and 1860 were of street urchins, a
subject that expressed his own problems with struggling for money and
feeling oppressed. A strong Union sympathizer, he was much
affected by the Civil War, and his greatest output is from this period
when he was a sketch artst for the 13th Regiment of Pennsylvania
Volunteers. The Battle of Gettysburg" is considered to be one
of his masterpieces because of its powerful depiction of battle.
The location of that painting is unknown, but a series lauding Abraham
Lincoln is in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
He spent his last years in Pittsburgh.
Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art
Michael David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art
David Gilmour Blythe was the fourth of six sons born to parents who had
emigrated from Ireland and settled in the United States. At the
time of his birth, the Blythe family resided in the community of East
Liverpool, Ohio. What we know of Blythe's early biography
includes a strict moral upbringing by a traditional family structure
and exposure to education through the Bible and literature of British
and Scottish poets.
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Blythe as a young man served as a woodcarving and cabinetmaking
apprentice for only six months before enlisting in the Navy for several
years. By 1840, Blythe's interest in art was shaping his career
through his production of portraitures, although he remained
self-taught. It is important to remember that at this time only a
limited number of artists visited or resided in the communities near
the Ohio-Pennsylvania border where Blythe had returned after the naval
service. Since many individuals desired portraits and photography
still was not the widespread phenomena that it would become in a few
years, Blythe found an available and ready market for his trade.
Fully integrated into the life of an artist, Blythe struggled through
tumultuous times with the death of his wife in 1850 and the financial
strain incurred when a landscape panorama he painted and traveled did
not produce its expected revenue. (1)
Blythe moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1856 and not soon
afterwards, his painting progressed beyond portraiture by experimenting
with genre subjects. Satire and wit dominated Blythe's
interpretations of everyday life in America as the artist poked fun at
many groups and issues from his contemporary society. Without a
traditional artistic background, Blythe emulated other artists and
illustrators, especially those images contained caricatures and
cartoons of social issues. Even though Blythe was the offspring
of immigrants, he allied himself with the Know Nothing political party,
a patriotic organization that sought naturalization of groups arriving
during the mid-nineteenth century. (2) This political faction aimed to
limit the numbers of immigrants while at the same time insuring that
those recently arrived conformed to true American ideals as they
interpreted them. Such sentiment was common for this time in
1. For biographical information on Blythe, see Bruce W. Chambers, The World of David Gilmore Blythe (1815-1865), (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Collection of Fine Arts, 1980), 11-14.
2. For a more complete interpretation of nineteenth-century
attitudes toward immigrants and their development within Blythe's
paintings, see Dr. Marilyn Laufer's unpublished essay, "David Gilmour
Blythe's Land of Liberty: Speculations on Immigration and the Body
Politic of mid-19th century Urban America", The Columbus Museum files.
Source: Staff, Columbus Museum
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