Copley, Boy with a Squirrel

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Copley, Boy with a Squirrel John Singleton Copley, A Boy with a Flying Squirrel (Henry Pelham), 1765, 77.15 x 63.82 cm / 30-3/8 x 25-1/8 inches (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

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Copley, Boy with a Squirrel

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John Singleton Copley, A Boy with a Flying Squirrel (Henry Pelham), 1765
So, imagine wanting to be an artist,
but you live in a city where there are virtually no artists, no art schools, no art museums, no galleries
and no one who wants to buy serious paintings.
This is precisely the situation John Singleton Copley found himself in, in Boston the 1760's.
We're looking at a potrait of Copley's half brother
This is Henry Pelham and the painting is called 'Boy with Flying Squirrel'
So for some body who is largely self taught, the painting is pretty remarkable,
my gaze first goes to his face, that wonderful red curtain,
that gathers my attention and frames that face so beautifully, but when i'm done there
my eye runs down his shoulder, down his arm and to his hand
and just look at the precision with which those fingertips are rendered
and they so beautifully and loosely hold that gold chain.
My eye then runs down, of course to the squirrel, its wonderfully cute and its nibbling on a little nut
which then links up to the area where his dark coat on his back
meet with the white coat of his belly
which mirrors the edge of the sidrous cuff. And then on the cuff, on one side you have the
light catching and on the near side you have that area in shadow
that just plays beautifully alternating against itself
so while this is a portrait of Copley's half brother , its also
a kind of demonstration piece. By 1765 when Copley painted this he was a well regarded professional potrait painter
in Boston but he wanted to be more. Copley also knew that portrait painting was actually the bottom
of a hierarchy of subjects created by the academies in Europe, the highest paintings being
paintings of religion and mythology and history, portraiture and still life being the lowest.
But it was portraits that people wanted in new American cities
Right, so the merchant class in boston, the wealthy elite had begun to really recognize the value of portraying themselves
But Copley wanted to push beyond that. Copley knew that Europe painting was more
and so this painting was actually made, as you said as a demonstration piece
to see if he could hold his own with the European academies
So he had this packed up in someone's luggage who was going off to London
and there it was pretty well received by Benjamin West, an American painter who was living in London and was pretty succesfull
and by sir Joshua Reynolds who was president of the Royal Academy in England
so the first thing we might notice is that we are not looking at the
front of the figures face, we are looking at him from the side
so we think that Copley did this he wanted to show that he could paint not just portraits
but also genre paintings where scenes of everyday life
i think copley was also really showing off what he could do with fore shortening
which is really a difficult thing to do if you look at
the sitters right hand its just perfectly fore shortened as is the corner of the table.
when this painting goes to England, Sir Joshua Reynold does praise it
but he says , before too long he better come to London and get some real training
here before your manner and taste are corrupted or fixed by working in this little way
in Boston which i think, makes sense because the way that England ruled as this important artistic presence
Copley felt that the situation in Boston was so inhospitable that he said artists retreated like
shoemakers. So, Copley is clearly aware of the limitations of Boston, limitations of the colonies
He's aware that portraiture which he does is a low form of art but
he's also, i think in a way, very practical. he knows that this is what people want, and
he's able to do it masterfully and beautifully
but there is a lingering sense that he is not painting the grand history, and religious and mythological paintings
of the European tradition and maybe cant compete on that level.

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