David Gilmour Blythe. David Gilmour Blythe was a self-taught American artist best known for paintings which satirically portrayed political and social situations.
Blythe was also an accomplished portraitist and poet. He is widely regarded as the Pittsburgh region's pre-eminent nineteenth-century painter.
Blythe was born in East Liverpool, Ohio on May 9, 1815 to poor parents of Scots and Irish ancestry. After a childhood in a log cabin by the Ohio River, at the age of 16, Blythe moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
There he apprenticed himself to woodcarver Joseph Woodwell. After his apprenticeship, Blythe returned to East Liverpool for a time and then joined the United States Navy in 1837.
His service on the USS Ontario included voyages to the Caribbean islands and Mexico. After his discharge from the Navy, Blythe returned to East Liverpool and took up work as an itinerant portrait painter. Always restless, Blythe traveled widely from Baltimore to Philadelphia and perhaps as far as New Orleans. Other than his stint with Woodwell, Blythe had no known artistic education or training and his early East Liverpool portraits were ungraceful and stiff. Despite this dearth of formal training, Blythe's proficiency, sophistication and finesse as an artist grew. Blythe fancied himself a poet as well as a painter. His early poetry was written in East Liverpool and is generally of a sentimental, simple nature. In t
Blythe was also an accomplished portraitist and poet. He is widely regarded as the Pittsburgh region's pre-eminent nineteenth-century painter.
Blythe was born in East Liverpool, Ohio on May 9, 1815 to poor parents of Scots and Irish ancestry. After a childhood in a log cabin by the Ohio River, at the age of 16, Blythe moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
There he apprenticed himself to woodcarver Joseph Woodwell. After his apprenticeship, Blythe returned to East Liverpool for a time and then joined the United States Navy in 1837.
His service on the USS Ontario included voyages to the Caribbean islands and Mexico. After his discharge from the Navy, Blythe returned to East Liverpool and took up work as an itinerant portrait painter. Always restless, Blythe traveled widely from Baltimore to Philadelphia and perhaps as far as New Orleans. Other than his stint with Woodwell, Blythe had no known artistic education or training and his early East Liverpool portraits were ungraceful and stiff. Despite this dearth of formal training, Blythe's proficiency, sophistication and finesse as an artist grew. Blythe fancied himself a poet as well as a painter. His early poetry was written in East Liverpool and is generally of a sentimental, simple nature. In t
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