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Copley's mature style began to develop after meeting the British artist Joseph Blackburn who had arrived in Boston in 1755. Copley, still in his late teenage years, borrowed elements of popular British portrait painting from Blackburn, including intense jewel tones, elaborate fabrics, and even gestures of Blackburn's sitters.
- American-British
- July 3, 1738
- Boston, Massachusetts
- September 9, 1815
John Singleton Copley / ˈkɑːpli / RA (July 3, 1738 [1] – September 9, 1815) was an Anglo-American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was believed to be born in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Anglo-Irish.
Influenced by a Rococo portrait style derived from Joseph Blackburn, Copley made eloquent use of the portrait d’apparat —a Rococo device of portraying subjects with objects associated with their daily lives—which gave his work a liveliness and acuity not usually associated with 18th-century American painting.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Typically displayed in the halls, parlors, and dining rooms of homes decorated with Chippendale-style furniture, Rococo tea sets, and other fine things, Copley’s portraits became centerpieces in the stagecraft of elite, eighteenth-century life.
Essentially self-taught, John Singleton Copley became the leading portrait painter in the colonies before moving to England in 1774. He painted miniatures between 1755 and 1770, creating roughly thirty oil-on-copper images and fifteen paintings in watercolor on ivory.
- July 3, 1738
- September 9, 1815
View all 159 artworks. John Singleton Copley lived in the XVIII – XIX cent., a remarkable figure of American Neoclassicism and Romanticism. Find more works of this artist at Wikiart.org – best visual art database.
John Singleton Copley was arguably the most artistically accomplished and financially successful portraitist in colonial America. He has long been recognized by art historians for his ability to render the distinct textures of hair, flesh, textiles, and other materials and to create the illusion of people and objects in space with dramatic ...
