Word: copley
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Inevitably, the chief hero of Flexner's book is Boston's John Singleton Copley, who made an art out of the craft. His stepfather died in 1751, and Copley at 13 had somehow to support his mother and infant halfbrother. Though portraiture was built on stylistic tricks and flattering poses of which he knew nothing, young Copley decided that...
...start with, says Flexner, "he read the few books about art available to him, with all the concentration of a virgin deep in tales of love." The books were not much help, so Copley went counter to the conventions and painted as photographically as he knew how. Gradually he evolved a useful and straightforward theory of his own; he concluded that his paintings were "almost always good in proportion to the time I give them, provided I have a subject that is picturesque...
...Copley painted Paul Revere sitting in shirtsleeves at a workbench, but he would never have portrayed a common stevedore. He married into society, and the Boston Tea Party came as a shock and a bother. In 1774, Copley sailed out of trouble to England, leaving behind a harshly energetic and thoroughly credible portrait gallery of such political rebels as Samuel Adams and Thomas Mifflin...
That evening, company foremen were guests at a champagne-confetti blowout at Boston's Copley-Plaza Hotel, heard a short pep talk: "You've done a damn good job, guys," said President Joseph P. Spang Jr., "but in the same breath I want to say we're still behind on our orders. We want to get that old man's face in every store in the world...
Glnny Simms--The poor man's Dinah Shore makes her first Boston appearance. At the Copley-Plaza's Oval Room. On and of all evening...