Blyth, Benjamin

• Benjamin Blyth (or Blythe, 1746-1811). Blyth was a colonial portrait pastellist, whose subjects included Abigail and John Adams in the early years of their marriage,while Bridges was a watercolorist and illustrator whose late nineteenth-century nature scenes expressed both the realism and the romanticism of her era.

• Blyth produced over two dozen pastel portraits during his career, but attribution is difficult because he seldom signed his work. Two other prominent people who were painted by Blyththe Adamses but certainly very were Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke (1728-1829), physician, scientist, and early adopter of the controversial smallpox vaccination method (he inoculated himself during the epidemic of 1777) and architect-woodcarver Samuel McIntire.