Research Catalog

Title

John Singleton Copley in America / Carrie Rebora [and others] ; with contributions by Morrison H. Heckscher, Aileen Ribeiro, Marjorie Shelley.

Publication

New York : Metropolitan Museum of Art : Distributed by H.N. Abrams, [1995], ©1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Barratt, Carrie Rebora.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)

Description

xv, 348 pages : illustrations (some color); 32 cm

Summary

• "Unexpectedly, John Singleton Copley illuminated Boston's colonial sky," writes one of the authors of this volume. The son of poor Irish immigrants, Copley (1738-1815) became the supreme portraitist of the colonial era before he left his native Boston for England in 1774. Primarily in Boston, and to some extent in New York, Copley depicted contemporary merchant princes, clergymen, and military officers and their wives, as well as Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other political leaders.
• His splendidly painted portraits provided his sitters, Loyalists and revolutionaries alike, with the opulent images they craved and brought him spectacular material success.
• This book, which accompanies an important exhibition of Copley's work organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is the first major study of the artist published since 1966.
• Like the exhibition, it focuses on the large-scale paintings, miniatures, and pastels Copley executed before he moved to London, on the theory that his American oeuvre is unified by the circumstances of its production and is stylistically and intellectually distinct from his English pictures.

Subject

• Copley, John Singleton, 1738-1815 > Exhibitions
• Artists and patrons > United States > History > 18th century > Exhibitions
• Group identity in art > Exhibitions
• Social status in art > Exhibitions
• United States > Exhibitions

Note

• Exhibition catalog.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-336) and index.

Contents

Directors' Foreword / Philippe de Montebello and Malcolm Rogers -- Copley and Art History: The Study of America's First Old Master / Carrie Rebora -- Accounting for Copley / Paul Staiti -- Character and Class / Paul Staiti -- An American Despite Himself / Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. -- "The Whole Art of Dress": Costume in The Work of John Singleton Copley / Aileen Ribeiro -- Copley in Miniature / Erica E. Hirshler -- Painting in Crayon: The Pastels of John Singleton Copley / Marjorie Shelley -- Copley's Picture Frames / Morrison H. Heckscher -- Catalogue / Janet L. Comey, Erica E. Hirshler, Karen E. Quinn, Carrie Rebora, Paul Staiti and Carol Troyen -- Chronology / Carrie Rebora.

ISBN

• 0870997440
• 0870997459 (pbk.)
• 0810964929 (Abrams)

LCCN

95002520

OCLC

• 32085369
• ocm32085369

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries