2990 x 4502 px | 25,3 x 38,1 cm | 10 x 15 inches | 300dpi
Data acquisizione:
1738
Altre informazioni:
John Singleton Copley (1738 – 1815) was an American painter, born presumably in Boston, Massachusetts, and a son of Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Irish. He is famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects. His paintings were innovative in their tendency to depict artifacts relating to these individuals' lives. With many letters of introduction, all of which are published in the Copley-Pelham correspondence, Copley sailed from Boston in June 1774, leaving his mother, wife, and children in Henry Pelham's charge. He wrote on July 11 from London "after a most easy and safe passage." An early call was upon West, to "find in him those amiable qualitys that makes his friendship boath desireable as an artist and as a Gentleman." “In England, what [Benjamin] West and Copley did together was to create a new kind of history painting, one with modern, topical subjects, chiefly death scenes of heroes, in a historic manner, but with scrupulous attention to contemporary detail” (Johnson 441) The American was duly introduced to Sir Joshua Reynolds and was taken to "the Royal Accademy where the Students had a naked model from which they were Drawing." In London Copley took no sitters at this time though urged to do so. Shortly before leaving for Italy he "dined with Gov'r Hutchinson, and I think there was 12 of us altogether, and all Bostonians, and we had Choice Salt Fish for Dinner." On September 2, 1774, Copley chronicled his arrival at Paris (the beginning of a nine-month European tour), where he saw and painstakingly described many paintings and sculptures. His journey toward Rome was made in company of an artist named Carter, described as "a captious, cross-grained and self conceited person who kept a regular journal of his tour in which he set down the smallest trifle that could bear a construction unfavorable to the American's character."
