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GEORGE BERKELEY (1685-1753)
by John Smibert (1685-1753)
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Anglican clergyman George Berkeley, dean of Derry, Ireland, predicted greatness for North America when he wrote:
Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way;
The four first Acts already past,
A fifth shall close the Drama with the Day;
Time's noblest Offspring is the last.
Intending to establish a missionary college in Bermuda, he went to Rhode Island in 1728 with a small group of supporters, including Scottish painter John Smibert, who was to be a teacher of art at the college. Smibert's portrait of Berkeley, painted before they left London, shows Berkeley pointing to a promontory that may represent Bermuda, a place that Smibert and Berkeley would never see. When the plan for the college failed, Berkeley returned to England. Smibert, however, settled in Boston and was one of the first professionally trained portrait painters in the North American colonies.
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Oil on canvas, 1727
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation
NPG.89.25
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