Benjamin Blyth, American (1746-1811)

Probably Mr. and Mrs. John Gardner, c. 1776

Pair, pastel on laid paper, backed by linen canvas on contemporary wooden stretcher, each 18 x 14 inches, within later, associated gilt frame; old backing of the male sitters has inscribed upon it:  “J. Gardner/ of Boston/ New England”.

By the 1760s, pastels became popular around Boston, Copley trying his hand at them as early as 1758, but perhaps the best-known and most prolific working in that medium in the Bay colony was Benjamin Blyth.  A native of Salem, he first advertised his work in 1769, announcing that he "Begs Leave to inform the Public, that he has opened a Room for the Performance of Limning in Crayons at the House occupied by his Father in the great Street leading towards Marblehead…."  Approximately 30-odd pastels are now attributed to Blyth, but only one signed and dated portrait is known.  Blyth confined his work in and around Salem, gaining "much employment from the money of privateer men" during the war, per the Reverend William Bentley, a Salem diarist, who dismissed him as a "wretched dauber".   Despite such criticism, Blyth's work (mostly in pastel on paper, but occasionally oil on canvas) was competent and sometimes more so and he enjoyed continued patronage until relocating to Richmond, Virginia in 1782.

Tentavely identified as John Gardner (1731-1805) and his wife Elizabeth Pickering (1737-1823) of Salem, based on the age/dress of the sitters and the proximity of most Blyth sitters to his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts.  Gardner was a merchant and shipowner and a member of a distinguished Massachusetts Bay family of longstanding and both he and his wife were middle-aged by the 1770s, when these portraits were executed, as well as the inscription on the reverse of the male sitter.  Gardner and his wife were probably painted during the first years of the Revolutionary War, possibly in response to Gardner's growing wealth and raised social standing, for not only had Gardner actively demonstrated his loyalty to the Patriot cause prior to- and during the war, serving in various public offices and capacities, but had also both dealt the British solid blows and enriched his own pockets by outfitting a number of successful privateer ships.  Gardner appears to have had strong business and political ties to Boston, as well.