Edward Greene Malbone (1777-1807)

Beneath this modest slab rest the remains of America's foremost painter of miniatures. Malbone, a native of Rhode Island, began his career in Providence at the age of seventeen. He pursued his calling in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and in London, England. Exacting and unceasing work undermined his constitution. Having sought in vain to recover his health in the island of Jamaica, he came to Savannah in fore-knowledge of death and died here in the home of his cousin, Robert Mackay, on May 7, 1807. Though not yet thirty years of age when he died, he left no peer in his art. Time has justified the statements you may read here in his epitaph. Today Malbone is acknowledged to be the finest miniaturist his country has yet produced, and among the greatest of all time anywhere.