U.S. COLONIAL PAINTER

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30861, 21 September 1965, Page 9

U.S. COLONIAL PAINTER

This portrait of Mis Humphrey Devereux is a work lent by the New Zealand National Gallery and the Greenwood family to an exhibition of the work of colonial America’s greatest painter, John Singleton Copley, which is being held in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The exhibition marks the 159th anniversary of the painter’s death and will also be shown in New York and Boston.

Copley was a self-taught colonial and his early paintings show a primitive technique. He eventually became

the best and most sought painter in Boston society and did portraits of such notables as John Quincy Adams and John Hancock, and a prosperous Boston silversmith by the name of Paul Revere.

In 1774 Copley went to Italy for a year, then settled in London for the last 40 years of his life. The exhibition has 47 pictures from this period, including one from the Tate Gallery and a portrait of the daughters of George 111 from the Queen’s Windsor Castle collection. Copely was credited with flying the first American flag in London after the revolution. While working on the portrait of Elkanah Watson, Copley heard George 111 announce American independence and then returned to his studio to paint in an American flag on a ship in the background.