John Singleton Copley Research Paper

John Singleton Copley

John Singleton Copley is an American artist born in 1738 in Boston, Massachusetts. Copley’s parents came to Boston in 1736 and the death of his father who is said to have become ill shortly after arriving in the colonies and traveling to the West Indies around the time of Copley’s birth in 1738. William H. Whitmore gives Copley’s father’s death as 1748, the year his mom remarried ("John Singleton Copley Biography"). James Bernard Cullen says: “Richard Copley was in poor health on his arrival in America and went to the West Indies to improve his failing strength. He died there in 1737.” ("John Singleton Copley Biography"). Neither of the dates of Copley’s father have been either confirmed or disapproved. This essay
The tabletop motif is the art of showing the gloss of a surface and the reflections it holds. Copley had the painting Boy with a Flying Squirrel (Henry Pelham) sent to London in a bid to open correspondence with painters from there. Sir Joshua Reynolds, The esteemed president of the Royal Academy, seen Copley’s painting of his step brother and insisted that Copley travel to London and study the masters and become “ a valuable acquisition to the art” (this is the path of virtue) or have his “Manner and taste corrupted and fixed by working in [his] little way at Boston.” (Rather). Copley not ready to give up his lavish lifestyle and good pay denied the request to travel to London. “Should he risk financial instability in the more competitive European art market or should he preserve his lucrative colonial portrait practice? “I make as much as if I were a Raphael or a Correggio,” Copley
Copley lived a lavish life style which he grew accustom to, and when his paintings stopped selling for the prices he wanted he went into debt. Copley borrowed money from family and others to keep up his lavish lifestyle and at the time of his death had amassed a large debt. Copley who tried to stay neutral in politics probably helped fuel the colonists more than he thought. Copley’s portrait painting of Paul Revere helped give the colonists a face to the American Revolution. Copley was one of the greatest early American painters, but his legacy was somewhat shadowed by politics and his lavish living