Portrait of a Gentleman

A lavishly attired gentleman strikes a formal pose in a dark interior enlivened by blue drapery at the right and a window featuring an elaborate volute at the left. His rosy cheeks and the tricorner hat he grasps in his right hand suggest that he has just returned from a sunset stroll. The brown coat sports an unusual scalloped cuff, a style called _à la marinière_ or mariners’ cuff, which was quite fashionable in England from at least the 1730s into the 1760s. The man’s left hand, placed assuredly on his hip, draws this coat back, as if to show off the sumptuous waistcoat and gold watch fob underneath. The waistcoat’s light blue silk is accented by a delicate, loom-woven subpattern and elaborate silver embroidery. Blackburn rendered this clothing in such remarkable detail that he must have worked from actual garments.

Little is known about this handsome portrait except that it was painted by the English-born Joseph Blackburn. The painting’s sitter and place of execution are unidentified, and its estimated date is based on the gentleman’s costume and the work’s relationship to other oils by the enigmatic Blackburn, who worked in Bermuda, New England, and Britain. Supporting the painting’s possible English origin are two facts: its first recorded appearance was in that country around 1956, and it bears a relatively large signature characteristic of Blackburn’s work there. More study is required to remedy the lack of information about this portrait in particular, and Blackburn’s biography more generally.