Art Gallery - Copley

John Singleton Copley, Boy with Squirrel (Henry Pelham), 1765, oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 25 in. John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) Copley was born in Boston and trained in the visual arts under his stepfather Peter Pelham, an English engraver who had immigrated in 1727 and married Copley's widowed mother in 1748. Copley's earliest paintings, from the mid-1750s, reveal the influence of English mezzotint portraits as well as the work of local and itinerant artists. He experimented with various media: oil on canvas, miniatures on copper or ivory, pastel, and printmaking.  By the late 1750s he was established as a portrait painter. John Singleton Copley, The Copley Family (detail of the artist), 1776/77. National Gallery of Art, AndrewW. Mellon Fund, 1961.7.1 Although he gained acclaim as America's finest colonial portraitist, Copley had long sought the approval of the art establishment in Britain. In 1766 he submitted a portrait of his half-brother, Henry Pelham, to the Society of Artists of Great Britain. Benjamin West and Joshua Reynolds recognized his artistic promise, but deemed his technique "hard." They advised him to study in Europe, where he might develop a more painterly, fluid style. In 1774 Copley finally was able to realize this ambition. He went first to London, and then spent a year in Italy studying Renaissance paintings and antique sculpture.