John Singleton Copley

John Singleton Copley (July 3, 1738 – September 9, 1815) was a painter born in America who later worked in Britain, active in both the Thirteen Colonies and England. He is thought to have been born in Boston, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both of Anglo-Irish background. After building a strong reputation painting portraits of wealthy colonists in New England, he left for London in 1774 and never returned to America. There, he enjoyed steady success as a portraitist for about twenty years and also created several large history paintings, notable for their willingness to show modern subjects and contemporary clothing. His final years were less prosperous, and he died deeply in debt. He was the father of John Copley, 1st Baron Lyndhurst, and the half-brother of Henry Pelham, an American painter, engraver, and mapmaker.

Copley’s mother ran a tobacco shop on Long Wharf in Boston. According to the artist’s granddaughter, Martha Babcock Amory, his parents arrived in Boston in 1736 and were involved in trade, like most people in the North American colonies at the time. His father came from Limerick; his mother belonged to the Singleton family of County Clare, originally from Lancashire. Letters from John Singleton, the mother’s father, survive in the Copley-Pelham collection. Richard Copley, described as a tobacconist, is said by several biographers to have arrived in Boston in poor health and to have traveled to the West Indies around the time of John’s birth, where he died. William H. Whitmore gives his death as 1748, the year Mrs. Copley remarried. James Bernard Cullen states that Richard Copley was in poor health upon arrival in America and went to the West Indies to recover, dying there in 1737. No contemporary evidence confirms either year.

Aside from a family story about his early talent for drawing, nothing is known of Copley’s schooling or boyhood activities. His earliest surviving letter, dated September 30, 1762, shows a fairly well-educated man. It is reasonably guessed that he was taught various subjects by his future stepfather, who, in addition to painting portraits and making engravings, earned a living in Boston by teaching dancing and, from September 12, 1743, by running an evening school for writing and arithmetic, which he advertised. The widow Copley married Peter Pelham on May 22, 1748, and around that time moved her tobacco business to his house on Lindall Street, a quieter, more respectable area, where the evening school also continued. In such a household, young Copley may have learned to use paintbrushes and engraving tools. Whitmore plausibly states that Copley could engrave in mezzotint by age fifteen, having lived with his stepfather Pelham, an excellent engraver and skilled painter, for three years. The family lived next to the house of japanner Thomas Johnston and his family, and Copley became friends with Thomas’s son William, who later became a painter.

The artistic opportunities of Copley’s home and town should be emphasized, because both he and some of his biographers, taking him too literally, have stressed the bleakness of his early surroundings. His son, Lord Lyndhurst, wrote that Copley was entirely self-taught and never saw a decent picture except his own until nearly age thirty. Copley himself complained in a November 12, 1766 letter to Benjamin West that in America there were no examples of art except a few poorly executed prints, from which little could be learned. Similar complaints appear in many of his early letters. They suggest that, while Copley was hardworking and skilled, he was physically unadventurous and prone to brooding and self-pity. He could have seen at least some good paintings and many good prints in the Boston of his youth. The quality of his own portraits was not accidental or miraculous; it had an academic basis. A book of his figure studies, now in the British Museum, shows that before age twenty, whether with a teacher or not, he made careful and precise anatomical drawings. Likely through the fortunate connections of a home and workshop in a town with many craftsmen, he had already learned his trade by an age when later art students were only beginning to draw.

Copley was about fourteen, and his stepfather had recently died, when he made his earliest surviving portrait: a likeness of his half-brother Charles Pelham. It shows good color and characterization, though the background accessories are somewhat out of proportion. It is a remarkable work for such a young artist. At fifteen, he is believed to have painted the portrait of the Rev. William Welsteed, minister of the Brick Church on Long Lane. Following Peter Pelham’s practice, Copley engraved this work himself to profit from print sales. No other engraving is attributed to him. An undated self-portrait showing a boy of about seventeen in a broken straw hat, and a painting of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan signed and dated 1754, reveal rough execution but also decorative intent and documentary value. Such work would advertise itself anywhere. Without actively seeking business—his letters never show him as aggressive or pushy—Copley began working as a professional portrait painter well before coming of age. In October 1757, Captain Thomas Ainslie, collector of the port, sat for him.