N.Z.-owned painting given high praise

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32480, 15 December 1970, Page 13

N.Z.-owned painting given high praise

An early American painting owned by New Zealand’s National Gallery has received high praise from an American art historian in a newly - published book which traces the history of art in the United States from the founding of the nation to the early twentieth century.

The book is “American Painting, from its beginnings to the ■ Armory Show;” tee historian is Jules David Prown; and tee painting is John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Mrs Humphrey Devereaux, which was presented to tee National Gallery five years ago by the Greenwood family, of Nelson. "Mrs Devereaux” and one other Copley painting are reproduced in colour in the book, and two pages of text is devoted to Copley, who is described as “America’s greatest colonial artist and a major artist by any standards.” Painted in 1771, the portrait was commissioned by Copley’s friend John Greenwood son of Mrs Devereaux who was then living in London. Dr John Danforth Greenwood brought it to New Zealand in 1843, and it stayed in tee family until 1961, . when it was sent on loan to the National Gallery. For the next four years the painting was in the United States where it was sent after a Wellington art critic, the late Eric Ramsden, had drawn the attention of the United States Ambassador to it. The painting was dark, fragile, and in poor repair, and tee United States Embassy, with the co-opera-tion of tee Greenwood family and tee then director of (he National Gallery (Mr Stuart MacLennan), engaged Mr Sheldon Keck, director of the New York Conservation Centre, to restore it. The bill was footed by the embassy. The Greenwood family presented tee painting to the nation in 1965, and when it returned to New Zealand in 1966 after touring the United States it was put in a position of prominence in the gallery, a guard rail was built in front of it, and a closed - circuit television camera was installed so teat it could be kept under observation. Copley is now one of tee most sought-after early American painters. In 1967, his portrait of Hugh Montgomerie was sold at auction in London for $115,000. Of “Mrs Devereaux,” Jules Prown’s book says: -

“In 1771, Copley received a leter from his former acquaintance and fellowartist, John Greenwood, now resident in London, commissioning a portrait of Greenwood’s mother as she

now appeared ‘with old age creeping upon her.’ Copley's portrait of Copley’s mother, Mrs Humphrey Devereaux, is a masterpiece of his dramatic late American style ... a flood of light illuminates the figure casting part of the scene into deep shadow. Copley’s art is marked by element of style that characterise much provincial American art, although in his hands they are carried to unprecedented heights. For example his light-dark con-

! trasts are strong and crisp, i “Copley lovingly delineates , textures; not since the Dutch I masters of a century earlier 5 had artists lavished as much care on the stuffs depicted. ‘ Like his Dutch predecessors ! Copley was painting for a Protestant, mercantile, materialistic society and his art was surely responsive' to that society. “Indeed, Copley’s great success as a portraitist lay not only in his ability to depict realistically the external appearances of people and their material surroundings, but also to capture the more profound realism of people as sentient human beings living out- their lives in specific social contexts, whether as wealthy merchants, intellectual ministers, fruitful housewives or characterful elders.” Tpe author gives a brief biography of tee artist, from his early training under his stepfather, the engraver, John Pelham, to his exile in London with the outbreak of the American Revolution; In the introduction, the director of the National Gallery in Washington, D.£. (Mr John Walker), sgys that Copley, with his fellow American artists, West and Stuart, "were among the most advanced artists of their time . . . both West and Copley were precursors of Gericault and Delarolx. “No artist measured up to them until the second half of the nineteenth century, when America produced three more masters of tee . first rank who worked in Europe, Mary Cassatt, Whistler and Sargent?*