Copley in England

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 1995 by Emily Ballew Neff

Copley was the greatest artist the Colonies had ever seen, owing his dramatic rise to the same New England connoisseurs he disparaged. However, this was not good enough for him. He recognized that to achieve "durable" fame his pictures had to be appreciated in London, the only place that really mattered to a serious Anglo-American artist of the time. His forty-year career in London demonstrates the degree to which he successfully presented himself, marketing his work through exhibitions at the Royal Academy and the popular one-picture exhibitions he organized. Far from the provincial sitting rooms of Boston, Copley created sensational (and sensationalist) paintings designed to attract a London audience accustomed to such spectacular entertainments.

When he arrived in London in 1774 Copley may himself have been a stranger, but his paintings were not. As early as 1766 he had submitted Boy with a Squirrel (Pl. II) to the Society of Artists exhibition in London to measure his worth against English artists. He was not disappointed, earning the accolades of both Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) and his own compatriot Benjamin West (1738-1820). Reynolds called Boy with a Squirrel "a very wonderful Performance...it exceeded any Portrait that Mr. West ever drew." He added that firsthand study of the old masters and further instruction would prevent Copley from being "corrupted or fixed by working in your little way at Boston."(3)

Reynolds and West also recognized certain shortcomings in Copley's work that were an affront to academic orthodoxy. Reynolds found "Hardness in the Drawing, Coldness in the Shades, An over minuteness."(4) West described it as "to liney."(5) In other words, Copley had trouble subordinating the details to achieve what was known as the general effect which, in the context of eighteenth-century aesthetics, was a sign of both visual and moral harmony.(6) Copley's insistent materialism, his precise portrayal of polished mahogany and the sheen of expensive fabrics celebrated the wealth of the colonial elite, but his "over minuteness" probably seemed vulgar to Reynolds and West. Such attention to detail emphasized the particular rather than the general, reminding the viewer of the mechanical side of the profession rather than the intellectual. In the context of the eighteenth-century effort to raise the status of the artist from mechanic to gentleman, Copley's style was a sign of provinciality that had to be overcome.

Copley heeded Reynolds's and West's advice, adopting the Continental manner of applying paint to the canvas with thin, transparent glazes that created depth and luminosity. Copley also began to do history paintings, considered the most distinguished of all subject matters. However, in the competitive London market, patronage for history paintings was scarce, and Copley recognized the need to make himself "conspecuous in the Croud" in order to succeed.(7)

This he did when his monumental Copley Family (Pl. I) was hung at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1777. As one reviewer noted, "Mr. Copley, from the size of his family piece, is likely to be as much the subject of observation in the rooms as any artist who has exhibited."(8) Copley had left his family behind in Boston when he had embarked for Europe. Shown reunited in the painting after a year and a half, the artist's wife, Susanna (1745-1836), his father-in-law, Richard Clarke (1711-1795), and four rambling children appear blissful and affectionate in a fictitious interior of genteel splendor. Copley, fashionably dressed at the left in the background, clutches a set of drawings that refer to his profession, and stands in front of an antique urn identifiable as the famous Medici Vase. It is the kind of reference to the grand tour that the Italian painter Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (1708-1787) made popular in earlier portraits of English travelers who wished to display their knowledge of the ancient world.

Copley had used the same kinds of props in his portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard, which he had exhibited the year before at the Royal Academy.(9) The Italianate landscape with what appears to be a Romanesque church in the background of the Copley family portrait completes the artist's proclamation of his cultural sophistication. It was just the sort of self-image a provincial artist might want to project in the competitive art market of eighteenth-century London. Here, Copley advertises his availability to the connoisseur - not the New England type, but the London type with which he had long aspired to be associated.

By contrast, Copley's self-portrait of 1780-1784 (Pl. III) is devoid of props. Emerging from a dark background, the face is built up of thick strokes of fluid paint as if the artist had been seized with a flash of inspiration. By appearing deep in thought with his forehead highlighted, Copley emphasizes the very faculty that eighteenth-century artists claimed distinguished them from artisans. Considered together, the two self-portraits vividly demonstrate the aim of serious artists of the time to represent themselves as both genteel and learned.