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John Singleton Copley unexpectedly illuminated America’s colonial sky. The child of poor uncultured parents and only briefly the stepson of artist Peter Pelham, he became by 1760, as if by Providence, the colonies’ supreme artist, a position he retained until his departure for London in 1774.
John Singleton Copley American. 1753–54. Not on view. While there has never been any doubt of Copley’s innate talent, these portraits give new meaning to the word “precocious.”
The floral patterns on the rug and sofa blend smoothly into the peaceful landscape. The Copley Family was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1777. It both raised the profile of the family in British society and advertised the artist’s remarkable skill.
More than two centuries after he painted it, Copley’s Paul Revere, which depicts the silversmith in shirtsleeves holding a luminous teapot, remains one of our most familiar images of...
According to art historian Paul Staiti, Copley was the greatest and most influential painter in colonial America, producing about 350 works of art. With his startling likenesses of persons and things, he came to define a realist art tradition in America.
John Singleton Copley was the leading portraitist of the American colonial era. This volume, which accompanies a major exhibition of Copley's work organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, focuses on the paintings, miniatures and pastels which Copley produced before he moved to London in 1774.
After he emigrated to London in 1774, Copley began to specialize in narrative scenes from history and joined the influential artistic institution, the Royal Academy of Art. Copley demonstrated a genius, in both his American and British periods, for rendering surface textures and capturing emotional immediacy.
