JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY
English School
1737-1815
A little boy with a squirrel was the first picture that pointed this artist toward fame and that was painted in England and exhibited at the Society of Arts.
This American-born Irishman had no family or ancestry of account, but he himself was to become the father of Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, and he did some truly fine things in art.
About the same time America had another painter, Benjamin West, marked out for fame, but he got his start in Europe while Copley had already become a successful artist before he left Boston, his native place.
He liked best to paint "interiors"--rooms with fine furniture and curtains, women in fine clothing and men in embroidered waistcoats and bejewelled buckles.
In 1777 he got into the Royal Academy, and on the whole had considerable influence on European art. If we study the portraits that he painted while in Boston, we can get a very complete idea of the surroundings of the "Royalists" at the time of our colonial history.
PLATE--THE COPLEY FAMILY GROUP
In this picture there are seven figures with an open landscape forming the background. The baby of the family plays, with uplifted arms, upon grandfather's knee. The mother on the couch, surrounded by her three other children, is kissing one while another clings to her. Before her stands a prim little maid, gowned in the fashion of grown-folks of her day. A little lock of hair falling upon her forehead suggests that when she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid! She wears a little cap. At the back is the artist himself in a wig and other fashions of the time. A great column rises behind him, forming a part of the architecture or the landscape, one hardly knows which in so artificially constructed a picture.
Copley painted also John Hancock, Judge Graham, Jeremiah Lee, and General Joseph Warren.