MFA Copley exhibit invokes Colonial elegance
Question: What does Paul Revere have in common with a nude young man being attacked by a shark?
Answer: John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), one of the pre-eminent painters of the Colonial period in America. Copley put them both down on canvas in the artistic mode of his time.
John Singleton Copley in America and John Singleton Copley in England are two parallel touring exhibits organized by different museums, that, coincidentally, both happen to be housed in Houston at the Museum of Fine Arts at the same time. The exhibits had previously been touring separately.
Most of his works are portraits and historical scenes. Copley's portraits, in particular, showcase his artistic strengths. These strengths lie in his use of rich colors and in his portrayal of the lustrous fabrics of the elaborate dress of his subjects. The most striking feature of John Singleton Copley's exhibit is definitely the captured luster of the era's fashionable velvets and satins.
Copley resented the fact that painting, especially portraiture, was often regarded as more of a trade, such as shoemaking, than a true art in America. Copley painted in a politically perilous time. A Loyalist to the core, he left America for England shortly after the Boston Tea Party and never returned.
In America, Copley's brushstrokes captured the likenesses of Paul Revere and John Quincy Adams. John Singleton Copley in America includes some 50 portraits of Colonial elite. To be painted by Copley was the equivalent of membership in a country club: Sitting for Copley signified that the subject had, so to speak, arrived. Copley tended to flatter his subjects, but he can otherwise be applauded for his likenesses.
John Singleton Copley in England showcases Copley's work hung upon walls of rich red, in contrast to the light-blue walls of the America exhibit. These colors are symbolic, perhaps, of a deepening of the artist's talent. It was abroad that Copley hoped to improve his work and measure his talent.
In England, he took immediately to painting the elite. Included among his clientele were King George III's three youngest daughters and many nobles.
Leaving America gave Copley the chance to refine his work with European masters. In England, Copley could truly focus on his art. He accepted, for example, constructive criticism from such greats as Benjamin West.
Once in England, the large, dramatic history painting, "Watson and the Shark," proved quite pivotal in his career. It helped him break away from portraiture. The painting dramaticizes an ordinary boy's loss of a limb to a shark in the Havana harbor. Painters of heroic, historical scenes were considered great in those times, so "Watson and the Shark" helped him gain a prestigious, much-coveted entry into London's Royal Academy of Art.
Take advantage of the shows' simultaneous presence in Houston.They will both be at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, 1001 Bissonet, through April 28.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the February 16, 1996 issue.
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