Thomas Birch (1775 - 1834 )

Thomas Birch was born in 1779 in England. In 1794, he immigrated with his father to Philadelphia, where he lived for most of his life. There he studied art with his father, who was also an artist. In 1806, Birch began using oil and watercolor paints to create his well known images of marine subjects, landscapes, and people. He became best known for his ship portraits, seascapes, and winter scenes, as well as paintings of naval battles from the War of 1812.

Although Birch lived in Philadelphia, he also painted in New Jersey. He was, in fact, well known for some of his New Jersey canvases, including his views of "Point Breeze," Joseph Bonaparte's estate near Bordentown. Thomas Birch passed away in 1851 a poor man. (CJS)

View of Philadelphia Harbor from the Delaware River

View of Philadelphia Harbor from the Delaware River, c.1840, The Collection of The Newark Museum. Purchase 1956 Wallace M. Scudder Bequest Fund.

River View, 1819, oil on paper mounted on canvas, 16 1/4 x 25 7/8 inches. Photograph courtesy the Schwarz Gallery, Philadelphia.

On the Shrewsbury River, Red Bank, NJ, 1840. Photo source: Website, Art History of the Hartshorne Wood (see link below).

The seascape shown here, “View of Philadelphia from the Delaware River,” is owned by the Newark Museum. It is an excellent example of the type of subject at which the painter excelled, and for which he is best known.

“View of Philadelphia Harbor from the Delaware River,” an example of his earlier painting style, depicts progress in the United States with a progression of boats. In the foreground there is a simple fisherman's sailboat. Behind it the artist painted a merchant's sailing vessel, used for foreign trade and import of goods. Finally, a modern steamship used for transporting people and cargo to riverside communities appears in the left background. Birch accomplished all of this through precise detail and smoothly modeled forms.

The second painting shown above is an earlier painting, signed and dated 1819 in the lower left corner. Although the precise location of the scene is unidentified, the subject “bears a strong resemblance to two much larger paintings that Birch had painted the preview year, ‘View from the Hill at Bordentown, New Jersey’ (1818, private collection), and ‘Point Breeze from the Delaware’ (1818, private collection.” Both of those paintings “represent Joseph Bonaparte’s estate Point Breeze, located on the Delaware River near Bordentown, New Jersey.”(1)

The third painting, clearly a New Jersey subject, represents a view of the Shrewsbury River near Red Bank, New Jersey. For this subject the artist traveled northeast across the Garden State.

Other paintings by Birch can be found at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Pennsylvania Historical Society, the Brooklyn Museum, the Shelbourne Museum in Vermont, and the Nantucket Historical Association. (SAH)

(1) Robert Wilson Torchia, New Jersey Remembered (Exhibition catalogue, Schwarz Gallery, Philadelphia, 2005), n.p.