586. John Singleton Copley (1738-1815),

American, Portrait of Rebecca Boylston, 1767.

Oil on canvas, 127 x 101.6 cm.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

 

 

John Singleton Copley

(1738 Boston – 1815 London)

 

Copley was an American painter of portraits and historical subjects who, in 1775, studied under Benjamin West in London. Copley perfected the American Colonial style. Famous for his American portraits, he also used one of the great themes of nineteenth-century Romantic art, the struggle of man against nature, in Watson and the Shark. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1779.