David Gilmour Blythe

Photograph of Blythe

Portrait of Isaac Watts Knowles, shown here in the Lotus Ware exhibit at the Museum of Ceramics.

The Post Office, Carnegie Museum of Art

Street Urchins, Carnegie Museum of Art

David Gilmour Blythe was not a potter or a founding father but he is the most famous artist to emerge from East Liverpool.

He was born May 9, 1815 to Susan and John Blythe, who were living in Wellsville Ohio at the time.  Susan, from Ireland and John, a Scotsman, were well educated and made their living by farming and cooperage.  They sailed to the United States in 1811 and lived in several different locations until 1817 when their wandering finally ended.  The Blythe brood, parents and five children, located to a farm near East Liverpool.  By the age of 16, David was apprenticed to Pittsburgh cabinet maker, Joseph Woodall. In 1837, he enlisted in the Navy, and served for three years aboard the U.S.S. Ontario, an 18-gun sloop of war.  Upon his release in 1840, he returned to his hometown and to his vocation of cabinetry and portraiture.

His earliest paintings are portraits painted between 1841 and 1846.  Nearly two dozen of these paintings still exist.  The Museum of Ceramics exhibits the portrait of Isaac Watts Knowles, founder of Knowles, Taylor, & Knowles. The East Liverpool Historical Society is home to additional 18 paintings, many of which have been restored to their original colors and detail.  Those early East Liverpool paintings reveal an artist still developing his trade. Biographer Bruce Chambers writes that his technique “betrays a still-wooden wrist.” By the mid-fifties, his portraits are dramatically different; they are more fluid, detailed, and show a warmth missing in earlier portraits.  The Museum of Ceramics also exhibits “The Border Ruffian,” a privately owned painting on temporary loan.

Blythe continued his cabinetry and portraiture business while wooing his long-distance love, Julia Keffer of Uniontown Pennsylvania.  The couple were wed on September 30, 1848, but “happily ever after” was not for them.  David’s beloved Julia died of typhoid or consumption less than a year after their wedding.  After Julia’s death, Blythe suffered depression, religious doubt, and cynicism and suffered from alcoholism.  All of this would be reflected in his paintings and his writings.  Blythe was also a poet and was often referred to by his contemporaries as the “poet-painter.”

Blythe’s paintings become political, satirical, moralistic, and his artistry was maturing.  Over the next ten years he produces his finest work as he establishes himself as a genre painter.  He is noted for his oil paintings of street urchins, landscapes, and the Civil War, many of which may be seen in the Scaife Gallery of Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. 

Blythe was found unconscious on May 15, 1865 and hospitalized.  He died the same day of “mania potu,” or delirium from drink. He is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, East Liverpool.

Two excellent books provide greater detail about Blythe’s life, paintings, and poetry.  “The World of David Gilmour Blythe,” a 1980 dissertation by Bruce W. Chambers is an authoritative and readable summary of Blythe’s life as an artist.  “Strangely Gifted: Collected Poetry and Recollections of David Gilmour Blythe” is a 2017 publication by David R. Majka.  It explores his poetry and writings and is very well-written and insightful. 

Abraham Lincoln Writing the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863, Carnegie Museum of Art