John Singleton Copley

American painter

• Born: July 3, 1738
• Birthplace: Boston, Massachusetts
• Died: September 9, 1815
• Place of death: London, England

Copley achieved a striking realism in his portraits and a vibrant excitement in his historical paintings. In gaining international acclaim, he showed that America could have a distinguished cultural life.

Early Life

John Singleton Copley’s English ancestors migrated to Ireland in the 1660’s. His parents, Mary Singleton and Richard Copley, were married there in 1735 and then came to Boston about a year later, where they ran a tobacco shop. Richard Copley died a few years later. John Singleton Copley, who had been born in 1738, was still a small boy, and his mother was left to run the tobacco shop alone. They lived in very modest circumstances until the boy was ten.

When his mother remarried in 1748, John’s life took a crucial turn. His new stepfather was Peter Pelham (c. 1695-1751), who already had something of an artistic career under way. He had been a moderately successful mezzotint engraver in London for some years when he decided to emigrate to Boston in 1727. There he found little public interest in his engravings, but he was a versatile man who undertook various other activities to make a living, including teaching.

Pelham had a number of artistic friends, including the distinguished portraitist John Smibert (1688-1751), whom he had known in London. Smibert was the foremost of a number of painters who were in Boston at the time, doing portraits and family groups from which engravings were often made. All of them, including Robert Feke (c. 1705-c. 1750), John Greenwood (1727-1792), and Joseph Badger (1708-1765), were household acquaintances of the Pelham family. Their influence on the talented and impressionable boy can be seen in the early work he did in his own artistic career.

The young Copley was a studious, industrious, somewhat introverted person, who read his stepfather’s books on art and learned to use the engraver’s tools. He was rather a good-looking boy who could manage the pleasant expression and good manners expected of him, while, like many teenagers, in his private thoughts he resented the great limitations of the provincial community in which he lived. Some time later, he expressed this resentment by declaring that in Boston painting was regarded mainly as a way of preserving likenesses of favored persons. The people seemed to think of painting, he complained, as simply another trade, like that of a carpenter, tailor, or shoemaker, rather than as one of the noble arts of the world.

Into this household a son, Henry Pelham, was born, in 1749. Then, in December, 1751, Peter Pelham died. Copley, at thirteen, again had no father. While there were older stepbrothers, Copley felt strongly that he should do all he could to support his mother and the new half brother. Within a year or two, he used Pelham’s tools and studio to produce a few portraits and other pictures. Thus, his artistic career was launched at an astonishingly early age, as he was driven by a combination of natural zest and ability for the work, and by adverse personal circumstances.

Life’s Work

It was natural that the young Copley’s first efforts at engraving and painting should be a virtual continuation, both in subject and in style, of the work of Peter Pelham. After doing only one engraving, however, he devoted himself exclusively to painting. For some time, his work was much like that of other artists; yet, already, there were subtle but distinct differences. His idea of the painter’s art, prompted by his reading about the Renaissance and the various old masters of European fame, went well beyond the portraiture that dominated colonial American fashion. He experimented with paintings from prints of scenes depicting classical mythology, but no one was much interested in them. Bostonians wanted portraits, and so he worked energetically to paint them. His portraits, beginning with one of his stepbrother, Charles Pelham (1754), were well received, and he was given frequent commissions within a short time. Among those early portraits were those of Joshua Winslow (1755), William Brattle (1756), and Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Belcher (1756), all prominent members of society whose names are familiar to historians. Copley was not yet twenty years old.

It was in the 1760’s that his talent burst forth into genuine distinction. His portraits of the Reverend Edward Holyoke (1759-1761) and of Epes Sargent (1759-1761) show a striking realism and great insight into human nature, qualities that eventually became distinguished features of Copley’s work. The young John Hancock had just inherited a fortune from his wealthy merchant uncle, Thomas Hancock, when he sat for a portrait by Copley (1765). He was very pleased, and this led to his request that Copley paint a portrait of his Uncle Thomas, to be presented to Harvard College, which had been a particular interest of the late merchant. That huge canvas, more than 8 feet high, was praised by many people. Copley’s fame was rising.

It was in 1765 that Copley painted the picture that changed his life, a portrait of his younger half brother, Henry Pelham; it later became known as Boy with a Squirrel. He sent this work to a friend in London, apparently hoping that a favorable reception of it would make him known beyond the colonies, and it did. Exhibited in 1766, it was strongly praised by the great Sir Joshua Reynolds, and also by the brilliant young Benjamin West (also born in 1738), an American whose precocious achievements as a painter had brought him to Europe a few years earlier. Both offered constructive criticisms, relatively minor ones. West, for his part, also began a correspondence with Copley, in which he repeatedly urged the Bostonian to come to London. Yet Copley was making a large amount of money by this time, for he had become much in demand as the premier portraitist of America. On Thanksgiving Day, 1769, Copley married Susanna Farnham Clarke, daughter of the well-to-do Richard Clarke, a merchant and agent for the British East India Company. It was a loving, solid marriage, which sustained both of them during the troublesome years that were to come. Three of their six children lived, as did their mother, beyond the age of ninety.

The times had become turbulent in Boston, especially since the Stamp Act riots (1765), boycotts, demonstrations by the radical Sons of Liberty (including the Boston Tea Party in 1773), and, finally, the arrival of British troops to keep order. Earlier, in 1770, there had been a confrontation with the troops in which five civilians were killed (the Boston Massacre). Copley probably, in a general way, shared the hostility to British policies, but he did his best to stay out of politics. His wife’s family and friends were nearly all Loyalists, some of them prominent and outspoken ones.

Copley’s artistic talents at this time were still growing. He was doing more and more pastels, wherein his gift as a colorist became especially impressive. He went to New York at the behest of Myles Cooper, president of King’s College (whose portrait he had painted when Cooper visited Boston). There, in seven months, he painted thirty-seven portraits, which included, he believed, some of his best work. Yet, as people in all social and political ranks became ever more preoccupied with the escalating troubles over British authority in America, the commissions became fewer. Copley had long had friends on both sides of the Anglo-American quarrels, but increasingly it was difficult to maintain neutrality.

At last, he made a difficult decision: He left Boston in June, 1774, for a study trip to Europe, the move that Benjamin West had urged so long as necessary for Copley’s professional growth. Copley always insisted that he left Boston only to improve his art. Along with many people of the time, he probably believed that the political troubles would pass, and he could return in a year or two to resume remunerative work. Instead, Parliament’s policy became much more severe, and Americans reacted strongly, leading to actual war by April, 1775. Late in May, Copley’s wife and children sailed for England; her Loyalist father and brothers came afterward. In October, Copley returned to London from his European tour, which had indeed been enriching, and there was a joyous family reunion. His American career was finished; he never returned to his native land.

Copley’s English career began in most promising circumstances. His reputation in England was high, he had friends among the most prominent men in artistic circles, his work habits were excellent and well established, and he was eager to paint. At first, for the sake of income, he painted mostly portraits. Later, he was able to do the historical paintings for which Americans had shown little interest. The first of these, Watson and the Shark (1778), received high critical acclaim, and it was a quick popular success. This painting was soon followed by The Death of the Earl of Chatham (1779-1781), a bold effort to portray on a heroic scale a recent (1778) event. It was fraught with political danger (Chatham had his enemies), the setting of the picture (the House of Lords) was known to many, and there were fifty-five portraits of public figures in it. Nevertheless, it was a great success, and it assured Copley’s reputation as one of the two great historical painters of the time. The other was his friend and fellow American, West. Other historical paintings that followed were also praised, including The Death of Major Peirson (1782-1784) and The Siege of Gibraltar (1783-1791).

In 1783, Copley was admitted to full membership in the Royal Academy. He moved his family to a fine new house. He received permission (though not a commission) to paint members of the royal family. That painting, known as The Three Youngest Daughters of King George III (1785) would, he assumed, bring him actual royal commissions; at the least, it would surely bring much business from the highest nobility, who would be pleased to have portraits done by one who painted for the royal family. His painting received poor reviews, however, and, while he continued to paint portraits, rarely were his sitters from the upper nobility.

At this time, Copley began to be plagued with other disappointments, as well. Both of the two children who had been born in England died within two weeks, late in 1785. Another picture was severely criticized in 1786. Copley had offended the Royal Academy when he exhibited his Death of the Earl of Chatham privately, before it could be shown in an Academy exhibition. Then, he repeated the offense with his huge The Siege of Gibraltar (it was truly a spectacle, nearly 18 feet high and 24 feet wide), for which he had a huge tent erected for public exhibition. Finally, a rift began to develop between him and West, whose political sagacity at least equaled his artistic talent, for he was on his way to becoming the president of the Royal Academy.

Copley continued his assiduous labors for the remainder of his life. Many of his last paintings were excellent, although none surpassed and few equaled his earlier best work. The prolonged wars with France (1793-1815) became more and more disruptive for Copley and his circle. His living costs remained high and even increased to the point at which they exceeded his income. Some artistic decline accompanied his physical decline. He died on September 9, 1815.

Significance

Copley rose from modest circumstances to become, in a twenty-year period, the foremost painter in America. He achieved distinction in his portraits, with his close attention to exact detail, lifelike realism, and insight into personality and character. Furthermore, many of the portraits have inestimable historical value: Paul Revere, sitting in shirt sleeves, holding his teapot, tools before him; Samuel Adams, in a good but plain suit, papers in hand, pointing to more papers before him, about to speak (one supposes) against British tyranny; these and other images make the men and women, and the times, come alive. His portrait of John Adams, painted later in England, also has this lifelike quality. In his English career, Copley became regarded as among the foremost painters of the time, virtually the peer of Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Romney. His historical paintings contain multiple masterpieces of portraiture, and they excite interest in significant events.

At a time when pride in America was crucially needed, Copley contributed to that pride. He always denied that he was a Loyalist, and there are passages in his letters and traditional anecdotes that support him. After the war, he had cordial relationships with visiting Americans, and he painted some of their portraits. His daughter married a Boston merchant, and Copley’s contacts with Boston continued. Yet his impact on a rising American culture was found in his demonstration that an American could achieve renown in the arts. This example provided inspiration to many aspiring American artists, who wanted their new country to share in full measure the richness of civilization and culture.

Bibliography

Amory, Martha Babcock. The Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley, R. A. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882. Family traditions and personal information by Copley’s granddaughter. Although some information is erroneous, this book enhances one’s understanding of Copley through its many anecdotes and the letters reprinted here.

Flexner, James Thomas. American Painting: First Flowers of Our Wilderness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947. Illustrated survey of colonial American painting, especially good on problems faced by aspiring artists. Chapters 9 and 10 are on Copley, and they provide a lively story of the artist to 1774.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. John Singleton Copley. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948. A brief biography that is especially good reading. The author revised and enlarged his treatment of Copley from an earlier book, America’s Old Masters: First Artists of the New World (1939). Includes thirty-two black-and-white plates plus a frontispiece in color.

Frankenstein, Alfred. The World of Copley, 1738-1815. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1970. A well-written, relatively brief account of Copley’s life that emphasizes the art as much as the man. Effectively portrays the context of Copley’s work, both the world into which he arrived and the quite different world at the time of his death. Includes beautiful illustrations, some in color.

Jones, Guernsey, ed. Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham. Vol. 71. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914. Indispensable material for a serious study of Copley.

Neff, Emily Ballew. John Singleton Copley in England. Houston, Tex.: Museum of Fine Arts, 1995. The catalog that accompanied an exhibition of the work Copley created during his years in England. Includes an essay.

Prown, Jules David. John Singleton Copley. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966. The most valuable single source of reliable, detailed information about the artist and his work. Brings together biographical information and informed aesthetic commentary. Impressive scholarship, and delightful to read. Appendices are invaluable, including checklists of pictures and 678 illustrations.

Rebora, Carrie, et al. John Singleton Copley in America. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1995. The catalog that accompanied an exhibition of the works Copley created while living in the colonial United States. Includes essays describing his life, art training, and techniques, and reproductions of the paintings, pastels, and miniatures displayed in the exhibition.

Weekley, Carolyn J. John Singleton Copley: An American Painter Entirely Devoted to His Art. Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1994. A 31-page illustrated pamphlet examining Copley and his work.