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John Singleton: John Singleton Copley
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Along with his friend and some-time rival L Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley was the first native-born American painter to achieve fame at home and abroad. Born on Boston's Long Wharf, Copley was instructed in art by his stepfather Peter Pelham, a mezzotint engraver and portrait painter. Copley ... learned from the paintings of Joseph Blackburn and Robert Feke, but he was, to an extraordinary degree, self-taught. Like West, Copley aspired from the start to be a history painter, but was forced to find his principal livelihood in portraits. Copley's likenesses perfected a style that gave special attention to technical dexterity in surfaces-the sparkling sheen of fabric and the detailed reflections of polished furniture, rendered with strong chiaroscuro-yet still probed the inner personalities of the prosperous sitters who commissioned them. Emboldened by the favorable reception in England of Boy with a Squirrel (1765, private collection) and by the encouraging words of West, Copley sailed on June 10, 1774 to England, where he would remain for the rest of his life.
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John Singleton Copley (July 3, 1738 – September 9, 1815) was an American artist of the colonial period, famous for his portraits of important figures in colonial New England. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, his portraits were innovative in that they tended to portray their subjects with artifacts that were indicative of their lives.
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John Singleton Copley had a great deal of respect and admiration for British artists. Despite his success as a portrait painter in America, Copley eventually moved to London before the Revolution began. He and his family's emigration allowed him become a part of the European art world. His move was ... about his family's safety. It was Copley's father-in-law's tea that was dumped into the harbor at the Boston Tea Party.
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John Singleton Copley (1738–1815) enjoyed a triumphant career in America before his departure for England in 1774. his respect for exacting craftmanship and his familiarity with the history of the visual arts made him the portraitist of choice in America for affluent New Englanders and New Yorkers during the two decades preceding the American Revolution. He appealed to the taste and aspirations of his sitters by depicting them in costumes made of expensive fabrics and surrounded by high style furniture. Copley provided his sitters with individualized likenesses that were psychologically penetrating and at the same time emphasized wealth and social position.
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John Singleton Copley was unable to receive artistic training in America because, unlike Europe, the American colonies did not have any schools or academies for training artists. Why would Europe have art schools when America did not?
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John Singleton Copley was born on July 3, 1738, in Boston. His father died shortly afterward. When Copley was 10, his mother married the engraver, painter, and schoolmaster Peter Pelham. Copley's earliest art instruction came from Pelham and from the leading Boston painter, John Smibert, both of whom died in 1751. Copley then studied with Joseph Blackburn, an English painter working in Boston.
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John Singleton Copley