SMYBERT, or SMIBERT, John, artist, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, about 1684; died in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1751. He had some elementary instruction in Edinburgh, and subsequently studied in Sir James Thornhill's academy in London. Then followed a three years' sojourn in Italy, where he was commissioned by the grand-duke of Tuscany to paint the portraits of some Siberian Tartars. After his return to London, Bishop Berkeley engaged him as professor of the fine arts in his projected college in Bermuda, and he accompanied Berkeley to this country, arriving at Newport in 1729. The Bermuda project proving a failure, Smybert went to Boston, where he established himself as a portrait-painter, and married in 1780. Gulian C. Verplanck said of him : "Smybert was not an artist of the first rank, for the arts were then at a very low ebb in England, but the best portraits which we have of the eminent magistrates and divines of New England and New York who lived between 1725 and 1751 are from his pencil." His most important work is the painting of Bishop Berkeley and his family, executed in 1731, and presented to Yale college in 1808. Other portraits from his hand, including those of Jonathan Edwards, Judge Edmund Quincy, Governor John Endicott, and Peter Faneuil, are in the possession of the Boston museum of fine arts, the Massachusetts historical society, the New England historic-genealogical society, and Bowdoin college, and in various private collections. The Berkeley group is said to have been sketched at sea during the voyage from England, although the child in the arms of its mother must have been added later, as it was born in America. This was the first paint-lug of more than a single figure that was executed in this country. Horace Walpole, in his "Anecdotes of Painting" (Strawberry Hill, 1762-'71), calls Smybert "a silent and modest man, who abhorred the finesse of some of his profession, and was enchanted with a plan that he thought promised him tranquillity and an honest subsistence in a healthful elysian climate." Walpole and George Vertue spelled the name Smibert. His works are said to have had much influence on Copley, Trumbull, and Allston. The last has spoken of the instruction he gained from a copy after Vandyke, by Smybert.--His son, Nathaniel, born in Boston, 20 January, 1734; died there, 8 November, 1756, showed great talent for portraiture. Judge Cranch, of Quincy, Massachusetts, wrote of him : " Had his life been spared, he would probably have been in his day what Copley and West have since been--the honor of America in imitative art." His portrait of John Lovell is owned by Harvard.