John Blackwood (art dealer)

John Blackwood (2 October 1696 – 12 November 1777) was a Scottish merchant who early in his life was a slave trader in New Spain and a politician who sat in the House of Commons briefly from 1727 to 1728.

[2] Blackwood's first known business venture was to set up as a merchant, in partnership with John Cathcart in 1726 in London, at Nag's Head Court, Gracechurch Street.

They traded products of British industrial manufacture for the logwood that the Spanish cut, while silencing the royal officers of the province with a bribe of twelve per cent.

Cathcart worked hard during his three years in the West Indies and recovered £600 of outstanding debts; he also paid more than £360 of his own earnings to help offset the losses, and a further £2,092 when back in London.

According to the Apollo journal, Blackwood “travelled extensively on the Continent, assembled a sizeable collection there and then returned to London to dispose of it at leisure from their own homes or through the auction rooms”.

Samuel Ireland, the English engraver and art dealer reported in 1796 that the late Mr Blackwood had purchased a room full of Cuyp’s work some thirty years earlier “for seven or eight pounds a piece”.

A two-day sale by Mr Langford at his house in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden in March 1760 featured about 120 paintings, many by eminent artists, as well as bronzes and other items.

Property in Crayford, Kent which once belonged to Sir Cloudesley Shovell eventually passed to his daughter Anne and her husband John Blackwood.

[13] Later that year a two-day auction was held of "The Improved Lease of the Genteel House, with convenient Offices, double Coach-House, and Stabling for Five horses, situated on the east side of Soho-square", together with furniture, wines and pictures.