Word: copley
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...overall effect is sympathetic, not showy. Copley had figured out how to paint what he saw, and what he saw was not merely a subject for his brush but a real human being...
...solemn, plump, tightfisted and deceptively timorous little fellow, Copley at once set up shop as a portrait painter. At first he borrowed poses and tony backgrounds from his step father's mezzotints, and tricks of color and modeling from his elders in Boston's portrait-painting fraternity. But he soon found he could go farther by paying scant attention to the modes and strict attention to his models. He thought nothing of spending 100 hours on a portrait, advanced as much by elbow grease as by genius. Early in his career he reached a pedestrian conclusion that lent...
Before he reached 35, Copley was a rich man, with three houses and 20 acres of land on Beacon Hill, and a Tory heiress wife. His humble beginnings and high achievements gave him friends on both sides of the political fence...
...made a brave try at mediating between them during the Boston Tea Party, was almost mobbed for his pains. His thoughts turned to the home country he had never seen and the greater glory to be gained there. On the eve of the Revolution, Copley (who hewed to the opinion that political contests are "neither pleasing to an artist or advantageous to the art itself") set sail for England. He left behind a gallery of American portraits destined to live, amaze and inspire as long as paint holds to canvas...
Four years after he went to London, Copley painted his great Brook Watson and the Shark (see color). The painting was commissioned by Merchant Watson himself, to commemorate a leg lost in a ship's accident in Havana Harbor. Copley used newly acquired techniques in putting the picture together: instead of painting directly from models, he began with sketches of the single figures and then combined their movements as as a choreographer...