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Summary
Summary
Boston in the 1740s: a bustling port at the edge of the British empire. A boy comes of age in a small wooden house along the Long Wharf, which juts into the harbor, as though reaching for London thousands of miles across the ocean. Sometime in his childhood, he learns to draw.
That boy was John Singleton Copley, who became, by the 1760s, colonial America's premier painter. His brush captured the faces of his neighbors--ordinary men like Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams--who would become the revolutionary heroes of a new United States. Today, in museums across America, Copley's brilliant portraits evoke patriotic fervor and rebellious optimism.
The artist, however, did not share his subjects' politics. Copley's nation was Britain; his capital, London. When rebellion sundered Britain's empire, both kin and calling determined the painter's allegiances. He sought the largest canvas for his talents and the safest home for his family. So, by the time the United States declared its independence, Copley and his kin were in London. He painted America's revolution from a far shore, as Britain's American War.
An intimate portrait of the artist and his extraordinary times, Jane Kamensky's A Revolution in Color masterfully reveals the world of the American Revolution, a place in time riven by divided loyalties and tangled sympathies. Much like the world in which he lived, Copley's life and career were marked by spectacular rises and devastating falls. But though his ambivalence cost him dearly, the painter's achievements in both Britain and America made him a towering figure of both nations' artistic legacies.
Author Notes
Jane Kamensky 's many books include A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley, winner of the New-York Historical Society's American History book prize along with three others. For thirty years, she worked as a history professor and higher education leader, most recently as Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and director of the Schlesinger Library at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. In 2024, Kamensky became the president of Monticello/the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
Reviews (4)
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* John Singleton Copley's finest works were his portraits, and Kamensky (The Exchange Artist, 2008) portrays the portraitist with the literary equivalent of his visual expressiveness with color, detail, and emotional discernment. She brings us into Copley's volatile world, beginning with his humble boyhood home in colonial Boston, where ocean winds delivered both commerce and war. Responsible, at age 13, for his twice-widowed mother and half-brother, Copley, as ambitious and diligent as he was gifted, taught himself to paint in a virtual aesthetic vacuum, securing enough commissions by age 20 to buy property. Kamensky traces the narrow line Copley walked as he painted both British officials and fervent patriots, including Paul Revere, a balancing act that became exponentially more dire when he married the daughter of a tea merchant at the height of the riotous protests against British taxation. Copley holds steady, shipping paintings to London in pursuit of critical guidance, only to be told that he must see Europe's masterworks. With the War of Independence brewing at home, Copley tours Italy and settles in London, where he assiduously creates astonishingly intricate paintings, from elegant portraits of the elite and his own loving family to enormous epic dramas, including Watson and the Shark and The Death of Major Peirson. Kamensky, whose avidly inquisitive immersions in each mesmerizing canvas double our appreciation for Copley's achievements, observes that the artist chased both soaring grandeur and earthbound fidelity. Richly resourced, prismatic, dynamic, factually and psychologically revelatory, and ebulliently spiked with political insights and ironies, Kamensky's biography provides an intimate view of the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath as seen through the acute, penetrating gaze of a masterful artist at work in the thick of it.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ONE CHILLY December day in 1818, a skeptical John Adams entered Boston's Faneuil Hall to view a painting. In his opinion, artists who depicted grand historical scenes, such as the image he had come to see, often distorted the truth and in so doing "conspir'd against the Rights of Mankind." Adams did not report his reaction to this particular picture, but he almost certainly disapproved. The painting in question was John Trumbull's "The Declaration of Independence," which currently hangs in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. Trumbull's representations of key Revolutionary events, along with portraits by Trumbull and his contemporaries of such figures as George Washington, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere - and, yes, John Adams - now enjoy iconic status as a visual record of America's founding. These images testify to the talents of a remarkable coterie of artists whose lives are explored in two new books. Paul Staiti's "Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution Through Painters' Eyes" examines the careers of Charles Willson Peale, Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull and Gilbert Stuart. In "A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley," Jane Kamensky focuses her gaze on one of these men, whose world was turned upside down by American independence. Aspiring colonial artists faced daunting obstacles, including a lack of both skilled mentors and access to museums with exemplary works by ancient and modern masters. Staiti, a professor of fine arts at Mount Holyoke College, reveals how some painters strove to offset these disadvantages. Initially apprenticed to a saddle-maker, Peale took art lessons from a second-rate limner. Stuart learned how to draw faces from an untrained but naturally gifted African slave. Kamensky, a Harvard historian, describes a young Copley earnestly studying engravings of anatomical images, all the while worrying if he would ever realize his lofty goals. The solution to this predicament was to go to London. Sooner was better than later, as the career of Benjamin West demonstrated. West left Philadelphia in his early 20 s and never looked back. Honing his skills in the company of such eminences as Sir Joshua Reynolds, West specialized in epic historical themes and rose to the top of Britain's art world. A founder of the Royal Academy, he became court painter to George III - an astonishing trajectory for an erstwhile provincial. Other colonial artists eagerly sought West's patronage once they made it to the metropolis. In Copley's case, however, what Kamensky identifies as an idiosyncratic "blend of caution and ambition" led him to postpone his trans-Atlantic journey and instead ship paintings to West for display and critique. By the time the 35-year-old Copley sailed at last in 1774. he was too set in his ways to achieve the painterly effects that might have earned him the high praise from London connoisseurs he desperately craved. West's royal appointment protected him from the financial distress that plagued the others, especially in colonial settings where art was more business than calling. American patrons preferred portraits to allegorical or historical subjects, and often demanded a degree of verisimilitude that stifled any impulse to artistic license. Paintings took a long time to complete and rarely generated enough income, forcing artists to seek revenue from cheap engravings of their work. Trumbull went so far as to solicit subscriptions to prints based on paintings he had not yet begun. In London, Copley's schemes to charge admission to exhibits of his work cost him the respect of critics who disparaged his entrepreneurialism, which eventually lost him money. Stuart repeatedly fled his creditors and sometimes sold paintings to buyers other than the patrons who had commissioned them. When the Revolution erupted, these artists dispersed into various political camps. Only Peale and Trumbull staunchly supported the American side. Stuart remained "politically apathetic" throughout the conflict. West may have harbored sympathies for the rebels but suppressed them to retain royal favor. Marital ties to a prominent loyalist family shaped Copley's allegiance, although he always insisted that he left Boston for Europe in 1774 to seek artistic advancement rather than escape political upheaval. Even so, as Kamensky shows, he remained conflicted to the end, bitterly fighting to retain his abandoned Boston property while struggling to reverse the downward slide of his professional fortunes in England. these fine books approach the topic of Revolutionary-era cultural production from complementary angles. Staiti's group portrait permits comparisons of the painters' various paths to artistic accomplishment and reveals the mix of cooperation and competition that shaped their careers. With a singular focus on Copley and a more vibrant prose style, Kamensky probes deeply into such matters as family relations, local politics and the psychological costs of failing to realize one's ambitions. The authors occasionally diverge in their pictorial interpretations. Take Copley's famous "Watson and the Shark." Staiti argues that Copley, adopting the style of Italian Renaissance masters, "aggrandized Watson's personal adversity" to emphasize "heroic valor, with Christian overtones." For Kamensky, the painting represents "a parable of redemption." By commemorating the rescue of a drowning boy in Havana Harbor in 1749. the image alluded to Britain's 1762 naval victory in the same setting. Copley first exhibited it in 1778 as the tide of the Revolution turned in America's favor, offering viewers "an image of a war in which Britain might still prevail." "Watson and the Shark" convinced at least one English critic that the Boston-born Copley could be counted as one of "our Countrymen." This statement raises the question: In what sense were these men "American" artists? All of them were born British subjects, and neither West nor Copley ever set foot in an independent United States. Kamensky acknowledges this ambiguity, noting that Copley is best known for pre-Revolutionary portraits now treasured as representations of "the spirit of an America the artist had never known." Staiti, in the end, is less concerned with the painters themselves than with the legacy of their prodigious talents. Their collective works, he concludes, "are key elements in a visual repertory that Americans can call upon in order to understand where the nation came from and in what direction it ought to be going." One can imagine John Adams scowling at such a statement. He knew that Trumbull's painting of the signing of the Declaration did not accurately depict the event - Adams, after all, was there. The stunning portraits now gracing the walls of American museums, as often as not, showed subjects as they wished to be seen, nestled in lavish settings with symbols of wealth and power. Indeed, having once sat for his own portrait by Copley, Adams later rejected the result as a "Piece of Vanity" inconsistent with genuine republican virtue. Any lessons posterity might have derived from this visual corpus misrepresented a Revolution that was far too contentious and rough-edged to be captured by the smooth application of paint to canvas, however skillful the wielder of the brush. Adams had a point. The visual record of the Revolution commemorates eminent founders, not ordinary participants, and the signing of documents rather than the quarrels that accompanied their composition. It is, however, the only visual record we have. These paintings may not make manifest all dimensions of a tumultuous Revolution. But even Adams might agree that it is salutary for Americans to be able to picture Washington and his contemporaries keeping an eye on them. ? VIRGINIA DeJOHN ANDERSON'S new book, "The Martyr and the Traitor: Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution" will be published in June.
Choice Review
Historian Kamensky (Harvard) paints the intriguing story of one of America's premier artists, John Singleton Copley. Serving primarily as a biography of Copley, Kamensky's work also highlights various elements of American and British society during the Revolutionary period, including the struggles of an American colonist attempting to remain loyal to England, the high-stakes world of professional artists in London, and how "middling men" made their way through the chaos of the American Revolution. Copley's life is a story of a man making his way into the upper echelon of society while being consumed with angst about falling into the "lower-class abyss." Conflicted over his loyalties, Copley left for England, where he painted America "from afar" but ultimately captured his own inner struggles to define himself in an ever-changing world. At its soul, Copley's story is a tale of the American dream displayed by what many modern Americans would deem an unconventional American. Kamensky's goal is to compel readers to rethink the Revolution's impact on Americans and what it was to be "an American." Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries. --Matthew Adam Byron, Young Harris College
Library Journal Review
John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) may be best known stateside for his powerful portraits of the American Revolution's patriot leaders, but this Boston-born painter lived a conflicted life. Kamensky (history, Harvard Univ.; The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse) recounts this great war through Copley's life and experiences. Although he created masterly portraits of men such as Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, he certainly did not share their political views and ultimately saw the Revolutionary War as a civil war. He made sure to be far away when fighting finally reached America's shores. Kamensky writes an engaging narrative history, interspersed with art criticism, of this time in American history through the eyes of a character whose principles and work created a turbulent existence. Verdict Anyone with an interest in both American and art history will enjoy this look at the war from a slightly different perspective.-Rebecca Kluberdanz, New York P.L. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. 1 |
| Chapter 1 The Provincial Eye | p. 9 |
| Chapter 2 A Dazzling of Scarlet | p. 39 |
| Chapter 3 The Imperial Eye | p. 76 |
| Chapter 4 A Son of British Liberty | p. 111 |
| Chapter 5 The Marriage Plot | p. 149 |
| Chapter 6 The Tyranny of Liberty | p. 183 |
| Chapter 7 Luxury in Seeing | p. 221 |
| Chapter 8 The American War | p. 254 |
| Chapter 9 Waging Peace | p. 290 |
| Chapter 10 Daughters and Sons | p. 328 |
| Chapter 11 Betsy Copley's Smile | p. 369 |
| Epilogue | p. 394 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 402 |
| Illustrations and Credits | p. 406 |
| A Note on Sources | p. 412 |
| Abbreviations Used in the Notes | p. 414 |
| Notes | p. 417 |
| Index | p. 505 |