Benjamin West (1738-1820)

1753–1774 · Workplace

Boston

April 1774

A mob at Copley’s house looks for the Loyalist Watson

A mob comes to Copley’s house demanding Col. George Watson, a Loyalist mandamus counsellor who had gone elsewhere; the patriots threaten to have Copley’s blood if he ever again shelters such a villain. In a letter of 26 April he is appalled: had Watson stayed the night, as he had pressed him to, he would have had to give up a friend to the insult of a mob or have his house pulled down and perhaps his family murdered.

June 1774

Sails from Boston for London

Amid growing unrest on the eve of the War of Independence, and urged on by correspondents in England, Copley sails with many letters of introduction, leaving his mother, wife and children in Henry Pelham’s charge. He never returns to America.

July – August 1774

London: West, Reynolds and the Royal Academy

On 11 July Copley writes from London after an easy passage; among his first calls is on West, in whose friendship he finds the qualities of both an artist and a gentleman. He is introduced to Sir Joshua Reynolds and taken to the Royal Academy, where students are drawing from a nude model; he takes no sitters yet, though urged to.

2 September 1774

Paris: the start of the European tour

Copley records his arrival in Paris, the beginning of his tour of Europe, where he sees and painstakingly describes many paintings and sculptures. He travels toward Rome with the artist George Carter, who kept a detailed journal and set down every trifle that told against the American.

1774–1815 · Workplace

London