Thomas Birch

Thomas Birch (1779 – January 3, 1851) was an English-born American portrait and marine painter.

Biography Birch was born in Warwickshire, England. He came to the U.S. in 1794, and assisted his artist father, William Birch, in preparing a 29-plate collection of engravings: Birch's Views of Philadelphia (1800). Subscribers to the series included President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson. This sold well and went into multiple editions, inspiring similar collected views of New York City, and of suburban estates surrounding Philadelphia and Baltimore. The son's first major painting appears to have been a view of Philadelphia from the Treaty Elm in Kensington, which was also engraved and published in 1804. He painted portraits until about 1807, when he took up marine-painting,

According to curator Stephanie A. Munsing: "Birch was the first American ship portraitist, and his paintings were copied by countless artists and craftsmen in America and Europe." Historian David S. Lovejoy said he was "outstanding among the marine painters" of his time. Contemporary critic William Dunlap similarly felt that there was no better marine painter in the U.S. at the time.

An assessment from 1867 reads: Marine landscapes were painted thirty years ago by an Englishman in Philadelphia — Thomas Birch. The freshness of his atmosphere and clearly-painted waves were a marked feature. His delineation of the engagement between the U.S. frigate Constitution and the British frigate Guerriere, and that between the United States and the Macedonian — each four by two feet six inches — are fine specimens of this artist, and of rare historical value.

Birch exhibited regularly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for forty years, beginning in 1811, and managed the museum, 1812–17. He also exhibited nine paintings at the National Academy of Design. Three of his paintings were engraved and published in The Token and Atlantic Souvenir annual gift book in the 1820s and 30s, including Outward Bound. the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the U.S. Naval Academy, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, among others. In 1833, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary member. He died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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