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Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 6
Lesson 1: Colonial period- Inventing “America” for Europe: Theodore de Bry
- Portraits of John and Elizabeth Freake (and their baby)
- Thought the Puritans were dour? Think again!
- African Burial Ground, New York City
- A Jewish family in early New York
- Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe
- The making of an American myth: Benjamin West, Penn's Treaty with the Indians
- Smibert, The Bermuda Group
- Copley, A Boy with a Flying Squirrel (Henry Pelham)
- Copley, Boy with a Squirrel
- Ostentatious Plainness: Copley's portrait of the Mifflins
- John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere
- Copley, The Copley Family
- Copley, Watson and the shark
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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). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Interesting but note that portraiture was not that low down in the hierarchy of the genres! It ranked above genre, landscape, still life, and flower painting and in fact many of the C18th Royal Academicians were noted portrait artists, not least Joshua Reynolds even if istoria painting was supposed to be the ultimate aim. The market in England was stronger for portraiture than for history painting and the Academy there only was only founded in 1768 so the situation in England was not the same as in say Italy or France.(6 votes)
- I thought portraiture was second highest in the hierarchy of genre paintings!(2 votes)
- Did he ever become respected?(1 vote)
- He must have, I think, when he went to London, where the artists weren't "treated like shoemakers."(2 votes)
Video transcript
(piano playing) Beth: 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
that John Singleton Copley found himself in in Boston in the 1760's. Steven: We're looking at a
portrait of Copley's half-brother. This is Henry Pelham and the painting
is called Boy with Flying Squirrel. So for somebody who was largely self
taught, the painting is pretty remarkable. My gaze goes first to his face,
that wonderful red curtain gathers my attention and frames
that face so beautifully. But when I'm done there, my
eye runs down his shoulder, down his arm 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. It's wonderfully cute, he's nibbling
on a little nut which then links up to the area where his
dark coat on his back meet with the light coat of his belly. Which mirrors the edge of the
sitter's cuff and then on the cuff, on one side you have the light
catching and then on the near side you have that area in shadow. It just plays beautifully,
alternating against itself. Beth: So while this is a portrait
of Copley's half-brother, it's also a kind of demonstration piece. By 1765, when Copley painted
this, he was a well-regarded professional portrait painter in
Boston but he wanted to be more. Copley also knew that portrait
painting was actually at the bottom of the 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 the new American cities. Steven: 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 in
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. Beth: So he had this packed
up in someone's luggage
who was going off to London and there it was actually pretty
well received by Benjamin West, an American painter who was living
in London who was very successful, and by Sir Joshua
Reynolds who was president of the Royal Academy in England. So the first thing we might
notice is that we're not looking at the front of the figure's face,
we're looking at him from the side. So we think Copley did this because
he wanted to show that he could paint not just portraits but also genre
paintings or scenes of everyday life. I think Copley was also really showing
off what he could do with foreshortening which is really a very
difficult thing to do. If you look at the sitter's right hand,
it's just perfectly foreshortened. As is the corner of the table. When this painting goes to England,
Sir Joshua Reynolds does praise it, but he says, "Before too long you 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 gives us a sense
of the way that England loomed as this important artistic presence. Copley felt that the situation
in Boston was so inhospitable to artists that he said, "Artists
were treated like shoemakers." Steven: So Copley's clearly aware
of the limitations of Boston, limitations of the colonies. Beth: He's aware that portraiture,
which is what 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,
I think, a lingering sense that he's not painting the grand
history and religious and mythological paintings of the European tradition
and maybe can't compete on that level. Steven: So we have this beautiful,
ambitious painting that situates John Singleton Copley in this
very specific historical moment. (piano playing)