COPLEY’S “DEATH OF LORD CHATHAM”
Washington, on seeing this picture, remarked, “this work, highly valuable in itself, is rendered more estimable in my eye when I remember that America gave birth to the celebrated artist that produced it.” The picture is ten feet long, and seven feet six inches high. The painter refused fifteen hundred guineas for it; it was purchased, we know not at what price, by the Earl of Liverpool, who used to say that such a work ought not to be in his possession, but in that of the public. These words were not heard in vain by the son of the Earl, who munificently presented it to the National Gallery.