John Singleton Copley

Copley, John Singleton

(1738–1815) painter; born in Boston, Mass. (stepson of Peter Pelham). Considered the foremost portrait painter in colonial America, he settled in England (1775) at the urging of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West. Although his family was Loyalist, he himself remained neutral during the American Revolution. He was successful in England, as seen in his historical subjects, such as Death of Major Peirson (1782–84). His reputation is based on his early American work, as in Boy with Squirrel (1765), a portrait of his half brother, Henry Pelham. Watson and the Shark (1778) is his most famous narrative painting.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Copley, John Singleton

 

Born July 3, 1738, in Boston; died Sept. 9, 1815, in London. American painter.

After 1774, Copley lived primarily in London, where he became a member of the Academy of Arts in 1799. He painted realist portraits, sometimes in pastels, which are distinguished by a sincere and fresh realistic approach (Nathaniel Ward, 1765–70, Art Museum, Cleveland; The Boy With a Squirrel c. 1765, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Among Copley’s historical paintings, which reflect a tendency toward purely external effects, his pictures with preromantic elements are particularly noteworthy (Brook Watson and the Shark, 1782, Boston Museum of Fine Arts).

REFERENCE

Prown, J. D. J. S. Copley, vols. 1–2. Cambridge (Mass.), 1966.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.