#john singleton copley

[historicl]

John Singleton Copley (detail)

[history-of-fashion]

1773 John Singleton Copley - Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin (Sarah Morris)

(Philadelphia Museum of Art)

[illustratus]

Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley

[portrait-paintings]

Joseph Sherburne

Artist: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)

Date: ca. 1767–1770

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York, United States

Description

The subject of this astonishingly vital portrait was a wealthy Boston merchant. He chose to be painted wearing a loose but elegant banyan, or lounge robe - a popular gentleman’s fashion at the time - and a turban instead of a formal wig. Most striking about the portrait is its convincing sense of reality, which Copley achieved through various means. He meticulously painted every fold of cloth and bit of pattern in Sherburne’s damask gown as well as every fleshy wrinkle on his face and hands. Likewise, by lighting the picture strongly from the left, Copley created a tangibly solid figure.

[granstromjulius]

John Singleton Copley

[john-laurens]

"A Revolutionary Portrait: John Singleton Copley Paints Henry Laurens" from Carologue Vol. 40, No. 1

You can read the entire Carologue issue as a PDF here

[historypaintings]

The Death of the Earl of Chatham

by John Singleton Copley (Anglo-American, 1738-1815)

Date: 1779-1781

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom

Description

The painting represents the dramatic collapse of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords on 7 April 1778. Chatham had just delivered a speech urging for a peace settlement with the revolutionary Americans. In order to preserve the empire he had done so much to build up, Chatham called for any form of settlement short of total independence. On rising, for a second time, to rebut the Duke of Richmond's motion that the American colonies be given independence, Chatham suffered a heart attack. The fallen Chatham is surrounded by his three sons and his son-in-law (Lord Mahon) and supported by the Dukes of Cumberland and Portland. Chatham never recovered and died a month later at his country estate.

Lord Camden who was sitting beside Chatham described the scene in a letter to the Duke of Grafton: 'He fell back upon his seat, and was to all appearance in the agonies of death. This threw the whole House into confusion…. even those who might have felt a secret pleasure at the accident, yet put on the appearance of distress, except only the Earl of Mansfield, who sat still, almost as much unmoved as the senseless body itself.'

The American Copley, following the example of his compatriot Benjamin West, employed the heightened emotions and grand gestures of traditional history painting to a contemporary event. The portraiture is direct, being based on individual studies, but considerable licence has been taken in the theatrical composition and the lighting. The painting excited much controversy when exhibited in 1781.

[artandthebible]

Eli and Samuel

Artist: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)

Title: Samuel Relating to Eli the Judgements of God upon Eli's House

Date: 1780

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Collection: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, United States

Eli and Samuel

Eli iwas a Jewish priest living in the days of the judges and serving God at the tabernacle in Shiloh, a city near the hill country of Ephraim (1 Samuel 1:1, 3). Eli is best remembered for his blessing on Samuel’s mother and for his part in Samuel’s first prophecy.

The priest God raised up was a boy named Samuel, who was dedicated to the tabernacle by his mother, Hannah, a formerly barren woman who had prayed for a child. Hannah spoke her prayer in Eli’s presence, and he had blessed her: “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him” (1 Samuel 1:17). God answered Hannah’s prayer, and she had a son. After Samuel was weaned, she gave him to the Lord’s service (1 Samuel 1:24–28).

The young Samuel lived in the tabernacle, under the tutelage and care of Eli. Each year, Hannah brought Samuel a robe for him to wear in the house of the Lord (1 Samuel 2:19). Eli again blessed Hannah and her husband, asking God to give Hannah children to replace the one she had dedicated to the Lord (1 Samuel 2:20). Hannah eventually gave birth to three more sons and two daughters (verse 21).

Later, when Samuel was a little older and Eli’s eyes were so weak that he could barely see, the Lord Himself spoke to Samuel. In the middle of the night, the Lord “came and stood” in Samuel’s room (1 Samuel 3:10) and told the young boy to deliver to Eli the message that it was almost time for the prophesied judgment to fall upon his family (verses 11–14). Eli humbly accepted God’s decree, and Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord in Shiloh (1 Samuel 3:19–21).

[thebaroquehuman]

1765 Mrs. Joseph Scott - John Singleton Copley

[i-love-this-art]

John Singleton Copley / "The Death of Major Peirson, 6 January 1781" / 1783 / Tate Gallery

[history-of-fashion]

1767 John Singleton Copley - Woodbury Langdon

(Dallas Museum of Art)

[interventionlullabies]

John Singleton Copley, Abigail Smith Babcock (Mrs. Adam Babcock), ca. 1774

[portrait-paintings]

Paul Revere

Artist: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738-1815)

Date: 1768

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Description

Paul Revere is Copley’s only finished portrait of an artisan dressed in shirtsleeves and shown at work. Revere is shown half-length, seated behind a highly polished table, and casually attired. He cradles his chin in his right hand and regards the viewer as if he has just looked up from the teapot in his left hand; the pot is finished but remains undecorated, and the engraving tools at Revere’s elbow attest to the work yet to come. When Copley painted Revere’s portrait, his sitter was an accomplished, well-established silversmith and master of the rococo style, both in engraving and in three-dimensional hollowware such as teapots.

The wigless Revere wears a plain white linen shirt with no cravat and only a hint of a frill on the right sleeve. The shirt is open, revealing an undershirt or possibly an untied stock beneath. His blue-green waistcoat, made of wool or matte silk, is likewise unfastened; two gold buttons are visible below Revere’s right hand. The open shirt and the waistcoat worn without a jacket are associated with work clothes. However, other aspects of his costume, such as its cleanliness and the gold buttons (possibly used here, along with the teapot, to advertise Revere’s products), do not accurately reflect the garments Revere actually wore to ply his trade. Moreover, the polished table is not the craftsman’s workbench. Thus, in his portrait of Revere, Copley presented an idealized image of the artisan at work.

[granstromjulius]

John Singleton Copley

[paintings-andspritechill]

John Singleton Copley - The Three Youngest Daughters of King George III (1785)

(From left to right: Princess Mary, Amelia, Sophia)

[historypaintings]

The Death of Major Peirson

Artist: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)

Date: 1782-1784

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom

Description

The Death of Major Peirson, 6 January 1781 1783 is a large oil painting by the American-born painter JS Copley, showing a dramatic battle scene in a small square lined with buildings. At the centre of the painting, British soldiers in red uniforms support the body of their wounded leader, Major Francis Peirson (1757–1781). Peirson’s blood-spattered white shirt stands out against the bright red jackets of the soldiers, who cradle him below a large, billowing Union Jack flag, behind which flies the troops’ regimental flag, with only the small Union Jack in the upper corner visible. In the right foreground, a mother tries to flee the battlefield with a baby and a child. A golden statue is also visible below the flag. To the left of this group appears a uniformed Black man apparently shooting back at the French forces who have just killed Peirson. In the middle of a crowd of red-clad British soldiers, the man is depicted wearing a navy waistcoat, silver epaulettes, and a distinctive hat plumed with variously coloured ostrich feathers. The intended identity of the Black man is not known, nor is the possible identity of a real person on whom the portrait may have been based. Many of Copley’s contemporaries were slave-owners or had Black servants in their households in Britain. Copley’s own family in Boston, Massachussets, are known to have had in their household an enslaved African child.

On the night of 5–6 January 1781, a small army of French legionnaires launched a surprise attack on St Helier, the capital of Jersey, a Channel Island which had been controlled by the British since 1066. The French captured the Governor, Colonel Moses Corbet, forcing him to sign a document of surrender. However, in defiance of Corbet’s instructions to stand down, Peirson leapt to defend Britain’s possession of the island, leading his men to the market square of St Helier to engage. There he was fatally shot ‘in the moment of victory, after the French had given way,’ as reported in the Glasgow Mercury (11 Jan 1781). The setting of St Helier is depicted in careful detail, facing onto Royal Square along what is now Peirson Place, with the statue of George II in the background. Likewise, in this and other paintings, Copley tried to produce accurate portraits of models to populate his works. In this work, Copley has paid close attention to depicting the likenesses of two figures in particular whom he may have drawn from life: Adjutant Harrison, who cradles the fallen Major, and Clement Hemery, who stands at Peirson’s feet, wearing the blue uniform of his artillery company. In addition, Peirson and probably other figures in the painting were based on models and existing portraits in paintings and statuary. Historians have suggested the possibility that the Black man in this painting was actually modelled by one of two Black servants employed by Captain James Christie (Kamensky, p.320–1). On departing for Jamaica, Christie had left behind two servants named Abraham Allec and Isaac Burton in a rented flat in Golden Square, just a few blocks from Copley’s residence. He had taken them both into his service during his tour of duty in South Carolina. Both were most likely formerly enslaved, had fled to British lines in search of freedom and were taken into Christie’s retinue as ‘servants,’ wearing his livery and being bound to his and his family’s service, although probably not strictly owned by him (Kamensky 2016, p.320). Although the exact position of Allec and Burton in Christie’s household is unknown, at the time Britain was profiting heavily from the trade of enslaved people and the position of so-called ‘servants’ in British households was often closer to enslavement or indentured labour.

Copley’s painting heroises Peirson and celebrates the British victory, epitomised by the Union Jack held aloft above him. At the time, British colonial forces were on the brink of losing their American colonies in the American War of Independence, and despite it being little more than a minor skirmish, this victory did much symbolically to revive confidence in the British Empire. Indeed, the engraver and printseller John Boydell commissioned Copley – who had, since moving to London in 1774, already made his reputation there with The Collapse of the Earl of Chatham in the House of Lords (1779–81, Tate N00100) – immediately following the battle in order to take advantage of the moment. Copley accordingly created a fantasy in his work. The propagandistic aims of the picture were apparently successful – when it was first exhibited to the public in May 1784, crowds of people came to see it and, according to one contemporaneous critic, ‘the chorus of praise reached all the way to Buckingham Palace’ (quoted in Wilson 1990, p.35).

This pro-Empire propaganda also informed the inclusion of the Black soldier, whose act of retaliation for the death of the fallen British major isn’t borne out by any historical evidence. Rather, the figure was apparently designed to signify and falsely romanticise the fierce loyalty of the British colonies and people subjected to British exploitation. As Richard Saunders writes, ‘The thought of the duty-bound servant faithfully seeking retribution for a superior’s death undoubtedly warmed the hearts of many Englishmen of similar station’ (Saunders 1992, p.32). The soldier’s elegant livery is striking, especially the plumed ostrich feathers in his hat, which are out of place given the painting’s setting at the remote edges of the American War. The ostrich feathers lend an air of opulence to the soldier’s uniform, reproducing tropes of exoticity that were commonly brought to bear on representations of Black people in art of the period. Overall, the soldier’s elegant dress was probably chosen to elevate the status of the officer the Black soldier served, whose intended identity is also uncertain. Copley’s key to the painting, the ‘Description of the Picture of the Death of Major Peirson,’ published by Boydell on 22 May 1784, labels the figure as ‘3. Major Peirson’s black servant’, but this identification seems to be a later decision. Indeed, in one of Copley’s preparatory sketches (Tate N04984), he labels the man as ‘Capt. Christie’s Black Servt.’. A Glasgow newspaper did mention that a Black servant of Captain Christie ‘distinguished himself greatly’ in the battle (Glasgow Mercury, 18 Jan 1781) but the changes Copley made in the identification of the figure speak more of an artist serving the propagandistic aims of their painting, with little care as to the actual identity of the man.

This is reflective of stereotyped, dehumanising depictions of Black people at the time. It also echoes the contemporaneous position of Black men within the British army, which by the end of the eighteenth century had become the biggest single purchaser of enslaved African men, deemed dispensable in the defence of British colonies (see Roger N Buckley, ‘The British Army 's African Recruitment Policy, 1790–1807’, Contributions in Black Studies: A Journal of African and Afro-American Studies, vol.5, September 2008). Historian Jane Kamensky has commented on the ‘sensational’ effect of Copley’s depiction of a Black figure in such an active role, considering this a ‘striking departure from the figuration of black bodies in European painting’, referring to a tendency for European artists to represent Black figures in passive, subjugated roles (Kamensky 2016, p.326, 323). She argues that Copley’s inclusion of the man in this very active role serves a propagandistic function as it supposedly elevates ‘British liberty’ over the ‘false freedoms of the Americans and their French allies’ (p. 323). This she positions as a positive ‘progression … in the direction of black freedom’, which she sees as beginning with Copley’s earlier depiction of a Black sailor in a position of relative prominence in the painting Watson and the Shark 1778 (National Gallery of Art, Washington) (Kamensky 2016, p.324). However, she concludes that the fact that there is no evidence to support Copley joining any abolitionist cause or of his family freeing their enslaved child makes it impossible to connect Compley’s depiction of Black figures in both paintings with an antislavery conviction. Whether or not one detects antislavery sentiments in Copley’s painting (an assertion that is vague at best), his evident disregard for the individual identity of the Black man in the scene typifies a widespread recourse to undifferentiated, symbolic typology in the treatment of Black people as artistic subjects.