About John Singleton Copley

Name variants

J S Copley
  • Biography

    The crowds who visited the Copley exhibition in Washington and Houston in 1996 were a testimony to the enduring regard in which this artist is still held in his native land. The utterly convincing realism of his portraits of wealthy Bostonian merchants and landed gentry in the years before the American revolution has secured him a lasting fame, a fact which would no doubt have surprised the artist, who had complained that 'fame cannot be durable where pictures are confined to sitting rooms, and regarded only for the resemblance they bear to their originals'.

    His attention to the minutiae of patterned lace, his polished wood and metal surfaces, brilliant fabrics and lustrous pearls, all rendered with a jeweler's prec...

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