American Colonial Era Painter, 1738-1815 American portrait painter, b. Boston. Copley is considered the greatest of the American old masters. He studied with his stepfather, Peter Pelham, and undoubtedly frequented the studios of Smibert and Feke. At 20 he was already a successful portrait painter with a mature style remarkable for its brilliance, clarity, and forthright characterization. In 1766 his Boy with the Squirrel was exhibited in London and won the admiration of Benjamin West, who urged him to come to England. However, he remained in America for eight years longer and worked in New York City and Philadelphia as well as in Boston. In 1774 Copley visited Italy and then settled in London, where he spent the remainder of his life, enjoying many honors and the patronage of a distinguished clientele. In England his style gained in subtlety and polish but lost most of the vigor and individuality of his early work. He continued to paint portraits but enlarged his repertoire to include the enormous historical paintings that constituted the chief basis of his fame abroad. His large historical painting The Death of Lord Chatham (Tate Gall., London) gained him admittance to the Royal Academy. His rendering of a contemporary disaster, Brook Watson and the Shark (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston), stands as a unique forerunner of romantic horror painting. Today Copley's reputation rests largely upon his early American portraits, which are treasured not only for their splendid pictorial qualities but also as the most powerful graphic record of their time and place. Portraits such as those of Nicholas Boylston and Mrs. Thomas Boylston (Harvard), Daniel Hubbard (Art Inst., Chicago), Governor Mifflin and Mrs. Mifflin (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), and Paul Revere (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston) are priceless documents in which the life of a whole society seems mirrored.   Related Paintings of COPLEY, John Singleton :. | Portrait of Rebecca Boylston (mk08) | The Death of Major Peirson (mk08) | Paul Revere dsf | Paul Revere | Self Portrait |
Related Artists:
Henry Allport
(1788-1854)
Circle of Pellegrino Tibaldi
painted The Meeting of Mary and Elizabeth in the Presence of St. Jerome, St. Joseph and Others in 1550 - 1600
Knut Ekwall
was a Swedish painter, 3 April 1843 in Säby (Småland province), Sweden - 4 April 1912 in Säby. Ekwall studied from 1860-1866 at the Academy of Arts in Stockholm, with emphasis on xylography (designing woodcut printing blocks) and drawing. He became a pupil of the painter Ludwig Knaus in Berlin. In 1870, Ekwall established himself as an artist in Munich in Germany and later worked in Leipzig. His works during this period were primarily for magazine illustrations, and were reproduced as engravings. He returned to Sweden and died there at the age of 69.