Antiques.(colonialism in paitings of John Singleton Copley)(Critical essay)

 
Every student and reader of History, who strives earnestly to conceive 
for himself what manner of Face and Man this or the other vague 
Historical Name can have been, will, as the first and directest 
indication of all, search eagerly for a Portrait, for all the reasonable 
Portraits there are; and never rest till he have made out, if possible, 
what the man's natural face was like. Often ... I have found that the 
Portrait was as a small lighted candle by which the Biographies could 
for the first time be read, and some human interpretation be made of 
them. 
Thomas Carlyle to David Laing, May 3, 1854, in "Suggestions for a 
National Exhibition of Scottish Portraits in Edinburgh, in the Year 
1855" 

Colonial painting in America came to full flower in the work of John Singleton Copley. Aside from the advice he may have received from his stepfather Peter Pelham and John Smibert, he was largely self-taught. And like so many other provincial artists, he often copied the composition and details of European engravings to achieve his purposes. But derivative or not, his portraits are handsome reflections of both his strong powers of observation and his keen ability to capture the vigor of life. No other colonial painter had his skill in putting on canvas the character and personality of his subjects--an illusion of living reality and immediate presence, rather than simply the representation of a person. And no other colonial painter succeeded so brilliantly in creating convincing expressions of the persona his sitters wished to project while placing them amidst the setting of their daily lives. As a result, Copley's portraits are the authenticating narratives, the visual biographies of character and class of which Thomas Carlyle spoke.

Copley's Boston was the most cosmopolitan of the British North American seaports. The wealthiest families luxuriated in the latest imported furnishings and ...