COPLEY, John Singleton

After the death of his father, a tobacco merchant of Irish descent, Copley first received instruction from his stepfather, the etcher Peter Pelham. As a painter Copley was largely self- taught, studying copies of old masters and also printing techniques and using all available sources of contemporary European painting. In his early twenties he was already a popular portraitist, receiving commissions from New York, Philadelphia and Canada. From 1765 onwards he exhibited in London, where his work was well received by his fellow painters. Following West’s invitation, he at last visited England himself in 1774 to perfect his technique. His travels on the Continent were short but intensive. When in London he painted several striking historical pictures, including Brook Watson being attacked by a Shark, whose topicality had a revolutionary effect. He was made an associate (1775) and then a full member of the Royal Academy (1783). Around this time he began to align himself more with European conventions, a tendency which became more pronounced with advancing years.

Copley was America’s foremost painter of the 18th century. This portrait, painted just before he left Boston for England, represents Copley at the height of his power and exhibits the intensive realism that was the principal characteristic of his work at that time. Hannah Fayerweather Winthrop was an articulate and intelligent colonist, the wife of America’s first prominent astronomer, a professor at Harvard University. Copley has rendered the varying textures of her muslin cap, silk dress, and lace cuffs with remarkable precision; in painting the table surface upon which she rests her hands, he demonstrated a degree of technical competence equalled by few of his contemporaries.

Copley was an American portraitist and history painter who moved to London in 1774 and remained there for the rest of his life, apart from some trips to Europe. The present painting dates from his American years, it is typical of his American style.

The woman who commissioned this portrait was already forty years old and, in her day, would have been considered an old maid - although, as a sister of the enormously wealthy Boston merchant Nicholas Boylston, she would undoubtedly have made a good match. Copley, an experienced portraitist, handled the task with panache. Without seeking to give this confident woman a look of youth that would have defied all credibility, he concentrates on her charming vitality She sits for the artist, dressed in a silken negligee. This is intimate garb indeed.

In France, only the aristocracy had their portraits painted in such apparel. Yet it is the prerogative of the bourgeois Rebecca Boylston to adopt this dress as a sign of her confidence and imperturbable dignity. The thin fabric also gives Copley a chance to emphasize Rebecca’s slender figure, showing her firm and youthful breasts beneath the satin sheen. At the same time, in the intelligent and slightly mocking gaze of her dark eyes, Copley suggests that this is a woman of experience. Six years later, Rebecca married a wealthy landowner who commissioned Copley to paint a second portrait of his beautiful wife.

The fact that Copley did not portray his model in the stiffly prestigious setting of a salon, but in a park, further underlines the natural charm of this millionairess. There is nothing contrived or affected in the way she holds the little basket of rose blossoms in her hands; it is almost as though she had just picked the flowers in the famous gardens of the Boylston villa. The slightly cramped Rococo attitude of Copley’s earlier paintings succumbs here to a new and distinctly American directness and spontaneity.