John Singleton Copley

Copley had a natural talent for painting, but his art was also supported by his stepfather, the engraver and painter Peter Pelham. He married Copley’s mother when Copley was ten, since his Irish father had died shortly after his birth in 1738. As a child in Boston Copley also studied with the excellent painter John Smibert and an English painter, Joseph Blackburn. At that time formal art training was unknown in America, but from these three artists Copley learned the meticulously worked technique and devoted attention to detail to which he owed his fame. His incredible sense of observation is perhaps best seen in the painting Henry Pelham, where he renders texture and warm colours down to the smallest detail to convey an incredible richness of colour. But Copley’s work was not done in the idealised English style — it showed the simplicity of American elegance, painted in oil. Copley was surely the first American painter to achieve success both at home and in Europe, and he played a significant part in the development of realist artistic traditions in his native land.

From the page of Henry Pelham (Boy with a Squirrel)

John Singleton Copley’s artistic career began in 1753, and he later became the outstanding portrait painter of Boston society. He was largely self-taught; nevertheless, his painting Boy with a Squirrel (1766) was received with acclaim at the exhibition of the Society of Artists in London. The painting attracted the interest of the famous portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) and of Copley’s compatriot Benjamin West (1738–1820), who succeeded Reynolds as the second president of the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts.

From the page of Watson and the Shark