Boston Painter John S. Copley, Caught Between the Tories and the Rebels During the American Revolution

Top Row: Site of Copley Home,42 Beacon Street, Beacon Hill, and Copley Square, Back Bay. 

Bottom Row: Copley's Portraits of Paul Revere, John Hancock and Henry Pelham.

America's first great portrait artist, John Singleton Copley (1737-1815) was born in Boston on July 3, 1738. He was the son of Irish immigrants who emigrated to Boston in the 1730s.

John's parents, Richard Copley and Mary Singleton from County Clare, were married in County Limerick before emigrating to Boston. Right after their son John was born, Richard Copley traveled to the West Indies and died shortly thereafter, leaving John’s mother to raise him as a widow. She worked at a shop in Boston that sold tobacco close to Boston Harbor.

In 1747 Mary S. Copley married Peter Pelham, a colonial artist and an original member of the Charitable Irish Society formed in 1737. It was Pelham who helped to nurture his stepson John's talent, and by age twenty Copley had gained a reputation as a promising artist. His first painting at age 16, "A Boy and the Flying Squirrel," was of his half brother, Henry Pelham. It was sent to the Royal Academy in London where it was was well received, and Copley's reputation began to take shape.

Other acclaimed works by Copley include "A Boy Rescued from a Shark in the Harbor of Havana" and "The Red Cross Knight," from Edmund Spencer's poem "The Faerie Queen."  Many of his finest works are at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Copley seized the opportunity to paint portraits of some of the leading colonists of the 18th century, including colonial rebels such as George Washington, John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. He also painted leading British Tories such as General Thomas Gage, John Wentworth and Thomas Flicker.

According to notes on the 1966 John Singleton Copley exhibit held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, "Copley was painting for a clientele that was splitting into two factions that opposed each other with increasing bitterness. He sought to remain neutral....But fence straddling was difficult, and as soon as he chose sides he would alienate half of his potential clientele."

His half-brother Henry Pelham was also a gifted artist, and did the original Boston Massacre illustration that Paul Revere later engraved and made famous. 

Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has over 50 Copley paintings, including the famous Paul Revere portrait. The Massachusetts Historical Society on Boylston Street has the portraits of John Hancock, Mary Otis Gray and several other prominent 18th century Americans.

A loyalist by persuasion, Copley’s life in Boston was disrupted by the growing unrest between the colonists and the British, especially in the months following the Boston Tea Party in December 1773. On June 10, 1774, Copley sailed to England, then a few months later went to Rome and Paris to study the great European painters. The following year, he moved his family from Boston to London, according to MassMoments.  

Copley always wanted to return to Boston, but never did. He had a fulfilling career in the final four decades of his life, and died in London in 1815.

His name lives on in Boston. Copley Square Park in Boston's Back Bay was named in his honor in 1883. In 2002, the city of Boston unveiled a statue to John Singleton Copley by artist Lewis Cohen, and it is now on the Boston Irish Heritage Trail. Also, Copley’s original home on Beacon Street has a plaque in his honor, located at 42 Beacon Street, placed there by the City of Boston in 1925.

Learn more about Boston's Irish history at IrishHeritageTrail.com.

Research + Text, Michael Quinlin