John copleys boy with flying squirrel

Your donations help make art history free and accessible to everyone! Steven Zucker Video transcript [] [music] Dr. Some background. John Singleton Copley is commonly considered the greatest portrait painter in the history of the American colonies, and yet despite this sterling reputation, his life began at somewhat of a disadvantage.

He was born in Boston to Richard and Mary, who presumably had recently emigrated from Ireland. She must have been a shrewd businessperson, however, for ten years later, on 12 July , she ran an advertisement in the Boston Gazette promoting her tobacco shop:. Interestingly, the man Mary Copley married was Peter Pelham, a London-trained engraver who specialized in mezzotints.

Pelham emigrated from England to Boston around , an arrival that roughly coincided with that of the portraitist John Smibert whose own entry into Boston was during the following year. For some years, Pelham engraved the portraits that Smibert had painted. In addition to his own art, Pelham also owned an extensive print collection from his time working in London.

This was the environment in which the young John Singleton Copley lived; a home that was as filled with paintings and engravings as one could find in colonial Boston during the first half of the eighteenth century. What is mezzotint?

John copleys boy with flying squirrel

Painting portraits. His portrait of Epes Sargent is but one example below, right. Sargent leans to his right, his elbow resting on a circular plinth. This same pose and plinth can be seen in an engraving Peter Pelham made in after an earlier Hans Hysing portrait of the architect James Gibbs. Much like one today might flip through a fashion magazine to search out a new outfit or hairstyle, Copley was utilizing preexisting compositions for his Bostonian clients.

A brief comparison of roughly contemporary portraits by Badger, Blackburn, and Copley easily explains why Copley quickly found himself atop the Boston portraiture world. The faces are somber, and more stiff than lively. Their bodies appear heavily cloaked by the clothing they wear, and there is no real sense that an actual body exists underneath these garments.

In short, they are competent, yet uninspired. The quality of work on the hand, though, is good in that hands are hard to do! Love it. It also points out of the picture, which you probably know is not the best idea. Still, all in all, wonderful work. Post a Comment. He aspired, however, to more than provincial success and wanted to know how his work would be gauged by sophisticated English standards.

To find out, in he painted a portrait of his stepbrother, Henry Pelham, not as a commission but rather for exhibition in London. It differed markedly from his commissioned portraits in its subtly complex composition. Pelham dreamily gazes upward with parted lips, as if in a reverie. She further saw the London exhibition's "direct juxtaposition" of Copley's painting against European works as a key indication of the "emerging distinctions" between American and European art.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. Painting by John Singleton Copley. Background [ edit ]. Description [ edit ]. History [ edit ]. Transatlantic crossing [ edit ]. Reception [ edit ]. Provenance and exhibition [ edit ].