John Smibert was the first fully trained artist to settle in the American colonies and as such can be considered the founder of academic painting in this country. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed as a house painter in Edinburgh. Seven years later he left for London, where he worked as a coach painter and then copying paintings for dealers. In 1713 he attended the short-lived academy organized by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), where he would have drawn from prints and casts. In about 1717 he returned to Edinburgh to establish a practice as a portraitist but in 1719 went, to Italy in search of further training, copying paintings in Florence and Rome. After about a year he returned to Great Britain, probably to Edinburgh. In 1722 he established a studio in London and achieved a certain reputation and standing, albeit at a low ebb of British painting.

In September 1728 John Smibert set out for America with his friend Dean George Berkeley, who had invited him to serve as professor of art at the college Berkeley was proposing to found in Bermuda. In April 1729, while the party waited in Newport, Rhode Island, for Parliament’s appropriation of funds for the college, Smibert went to Boston to paint some portraits and met with such success that he was encouraged to settle there. His work was so superior to anything available that he dominated portraiture until the mid-1740s, when failing eyesight forced him to abandon painting. To supplement his income he opened a shop selling prints and artists’ supplies. It continued as an influential factor in New England painting even after his death.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alan Burroughs, "Notes on Smibert’s Development," Art in America 30 (April 1942): 109-21 § Henry Wilder Foote, John Smibert: Painter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950), with catalogue of portraits, bibliography § John Smibert, The Notebook of John Smibert, with Essays by Sir David Evans, John Kerslake, and Andrew Oliver and Notes Relating to Smibert’s, American Portraits by Andrew Oliver (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1969) § Richard H. Saunders III, "John Smibert (1688-1751): Anglo-American Portrait Painter," Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1979, with catalogue, bibliography § Miles Chappell, "A Note on John Smibert’s Italian Sojourn," Art Bulletin 64 (March 1982): 132-38.