John Singleton CopleyUSA, 1738–1815Mrs. George Watson
Må man se det?
Ukendt: museet holder tæt
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Washington, D.C., USA
Ejeren er kendt. Om det er udstillet i dag, siger museet ikke, og at gætte har vi ikke lært.
- Uændret siden
- 25. sep. 2026
- Kilde
- Museets egne samlingsdata
About the painting
Mrs. Watson, the wife of a wealthy Boston merchant, wears a fashionably low-cut gown of luscious satin and white lace and holds a porcelain vase that echoes the contours of her figure. The yards of expensive fabric and silk ribbons in the costume testified to George Watson's success as an importer of European goods, as did the fact that he could afford to commission a portrait from Boston's foremost painter. Mrs. Watson showed herself to colonial society as a fashionable English matron, but her direct gaze suggests the grit and character of a new American society that would emerge within ten years.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Oplysninger
- Inventarnummer
- 1991.189
What it shows
Kilder
- Smithsonian American Art Museum: the museum's own open data · hentet for 5 dage siden
- Billede: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0
Imens i livet hos John Singleton Copley
Hele livet1753–1774 · Virkested
Boston
1760s
A needy tobacconist’s son among Boston’s elite
The income Copley earned by painting in the 1760s was extraordinary for his town and time and raised the son of a needy tobacconist into the local aristocracy. The foremost personages of New England came to his painting-room as sitters.
1766
“A Boy with a Flying Squirrel” at the London exhibition
The exhibition of 1766 establishes Copley’s fame in England. Joshua Reynolds speaks warmly of the picture, saying that with a proper artistic education Copley could become a master of world stature.
4 August 1766
West urges Copley to study in Europe
By one account, on receiving the picture without the painter’s name West exclaimed that its colouring was worthy of Titian, and he got it into the exhibition; on 4 August he writes to Copley of Reynolds’s interest and advises a visit to Europe of three or four years. In October and November Copley gladly agrees to send more pictures but laments that no portrait worthy of the name of a picture has been brought to Boston within his memory.
3 September 1766
Elected to the Society of Artists of Great Britain
By vote of 3 September 1766, “A Boy with a Flying Squirrel” makes the young Boston painter a Fellow of the Society of Artists of Great Britain.
