John Greenwood (artist)

Portrait of John Greenwood by Lemuel Francis Abbott circa 1785

Greenwood was born on 7 December 1727 in Boston, Massachusetts, and baptized on 10 December in the Old North Church, Boston.

His father died insolvent in 1742 and at about this time Greenwood apprenticed to Thomas Johnston, a Boston line engraver, sign painter, and japanner. According to his son's later account, Greenwood soon left Johnston's studio in order to pursue portraiture.[1] He left Boston in 1752 and traveled to the Dutch colony of Surinam in northeast South America. He stayed there for over five years, during which time he executed 115 portraits, before traveling again, this time to Europe, arriving in Amsterdam in May 1758. He settled there for a time to learn the art of making mezzotints, and was documented as a member of the Amsterdam Drawing Academy in 1758 by Jacob Otten Husly.[2] After leaving Amsterdam, Greenwood stayed in Paris, then London, where he eventually settled in 1764.

One of Greenwood's best known works is Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam (1755), a drunken scene featuring various prominent Rhode Island merchants, including Declaration of Independence signatory Stephen Hopkins, Governor Joseph Wanton, Admiral Esek Hopkins, and Governor Nicholas Cooke.

Greenwood died while on a visit to Margate, Kent on the 16th of September, 1792, and is buried there.

Greenwood was the son of Samuel Greenwood (1690–1742), a Harvard graduate (1709) and merchant, and his second wife, Mary Charnock Devereux (c. 1709-1794).[3] In 1770, Greenwood wrote to his childhood friend, the painter John Singleton Copley, to commission a portrait of his mother Mary Charnock Devereux: ‘I am very desirous of seeing the good lady’s face as she now appears, with old age creeping upon her.’ this portrait is now part of the international painting collection at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.[4] His son John Greenwood, Jr. (1772–1815) is the subject of a portrait by William Beechey.[5]

• The artist's family
• 
  Mrs Devereux was the second wife of Samuel Greenwood and mother of John Greenwood; John S Copley 1770
• 
  Portrait of Greenwoods son John Greenwood, Jr. by William Beechey circa 1795
• 
  The Greenwood-Lee Family including a self-portrait of the artist circa 1747

Greenwood's great great granddaughter is the New Zealand photographer Elizabeth Greenwood (1873–1961).

• Artworks
• 
  Sea Captains Carousing in Surina (1755)
• 
  Portrait of Richard Waldron (1751)
• 
  Portrait of Mrs. Richard Waldron (1751)
• 
  Portret van een officier ter zee met een kustkaart en een verrekijker in de hand (1760)
• 
  Portrait of Thomas Westbrook Waldron (1750)
• 
  Portrait of Mrs. Mary Fitch Cabot (circa 1745-1752)
• 
  John Richard Comyns of Hylands, Essex, with His Daughters (1775)
• 
  The seven sisters of Tottenham (1790)
• 
  Mrs. Henry Bromfield (Margaret Fayerweather) (1749)
• 
  Portrait of Mrs. John Greenleaf (1749)
• 
  Portrait of Henry Flynt (between circa 1749 and circa 1750)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to John Greenwood.

• "A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States" By William Dunlap, Frank William Bayley, Charles Eliot Goodspeed (Boston: 1918 C.E. Goodspeed)
• John Singleton Copley in America, a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on John Greenwood (see index)
• Mrs Humphrey Devereux (1771) at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa