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Oil on canvas, cleaned and relined, framed size: 20 ½" x 24 ½".
Provenance: Carl P. Crossman, Child's Gallery, Boston, MA. Noted art historian and published authority on 19th century American and Chinese Export decorative arts.
Price: $5,500 JRD-11-7
John S. Blunt was born in 1798 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 1821, he was listed in the Portsmouth directory as "Ornamental and Portrait Painter". In November, 1822, the New Hampshire Gazette listed under his name "profiles, profile miniature pictures, landscapes and ornamental painting". The earliest pictures so far recorded as signed and dated by blunt are in the year 1823; one, a Long Island landscape--his only scene known to have originated outside of New England. In the Portsmouth Journal for April, 1825, he proposed opening a "Drawing and Painting School ---for the instruction of young ladies and gentlemen in the arts:. In 1826, he moved his place of business and in 1827 advertised again advertised portrait, landscape, ornamental, and military standard painting. In 1830 the Blunt family moved to Boston, where the artist began exhibiting at the Boston Anthenaeum. In September, 1835, his obituary appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser and Patriot, stating that Blunt died at sea between New Orleans and Boston. Blunt's untimely death at the age of 37 terminated the brief career of one of our most promising early 19th century artists. Blunt's account book carries many entries for decorating fire buckets, fancy chairs, and signs; and while he was continuing his career as an ornamental painter, he was also producing landscapes and marine paintings. In 1948, Nina Fletcher Little published an article on Blunt in The Magazine ANTIQUES as part of a series on less well-known 19th century, American painters. In 1976, Robert Bishop brought together an outstanding group of portraits attributed to Blunt at the University of Michigan Museum of Art under the name of "The Borden Limner".
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