In his youth Copley had the slight advantage of some instruction from his stepfather, Peter Pelham, the engraver; but early acquired a style of his own. His technic was not very fluent; but his design was good, his drawing remarkably true, and his characterization unusual. A dignified formality pervaded his canvases, as befitted the sitters of his native Boston. It is said that a Copley portrait in a New England family is a certificate of aristocracy and social standing. He painted textures well, though somewhat laboriously. “Large ruffles, heavy silks, silver buckles, gold-embroidered vests, and powdered wigs are blent in our imagination with the memory of patriot zeal and matronly influence,” writes Tuckerman. But those adjuncts to the personality would not be so associated with the patrician Colonials had not Copley rendered them so well. None of the early painters so accurately gave the spirit of their time as he. As we can glean from Lely’s portraits of the beauties of the Carolean Court the free and easy manners that were its atmosphere, so from Copley’s portraits we get the moral atmosphere of that Colonial time, with the reserve and self-respect of its men and the virtue and propriety of its women. He did not go abroad until he was thirty-seven years old. In England he was well received, and had many commissions. He was made an A. R. A. in 1777, and a full academician in 1779. Shortly after this he was commissioned to paint “The Siege of Gibraltar.” His son, Baron Lyndhurst, became lord chancellor, and collected many of his father’s works.
THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
By Matthew Pratt, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
THE PEALES, A FAMILY OF PAINTERS
BENJAMIN WEST
By Sir Thomas Lawrence, the English portrait painter.
Charles Willson Peale’s fame is almost wholly derived from his portraits of Washington, of which he painted fourteen from life, extending in time from 1772 to 1795. His earliest shows Washington in the uniform of a British Colonial colonel, and is now in the possession of Washington and Lee University.
Washington is known to have sat forty-four times to various painters. Based on these comparatively few sittings have been more portrayals on canvas than have been accorded to any man in history, with the possible exception of Napoleon. A collection of engraved portraits of him has been made which included over four thousand plates. Rembrandt Peale, a son of Charles Willson Peale, contributed a cumulative fame to the name, as he also painted Washington, as well as Jefferson, Dolly Madison, and other political and social leaders. He, as well as his father and his uncle, James Peale, all worked at times in miniature. In the work of father and son there was little merit, little invention, but a creditable craftsmanship. They recorded the appearance of the people of their day with uninspired fluency.