Daniel Crommelin Verplanck
Particulars
- Accession number
- 49.12
Meanwhile, in the life of John Singleton Copley
The whole life1753–1774 · Workplace
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.
16 November 1769
Married: Susannah Farnum Clarke
1770
Daughter born: Elizabeth Copley
June 1771 – January 1772
A trip to New York: thirty-seven portraits
At the invitation of Myles Cooper, president of King’s College, whose portrait Copley had painted in Boston in 1768, he sets up his easel on Broadway in New York and paints thirty-seven portraits. It is his only American tour away from Boston: most of the Southern portraits attributed to him were in fact made by Henry Benbridge.
1773
His father-in-law is consignee of the Boston Tea Party tea
Richard Clarke, the artist’s father-in-law, was the merchant to whom the tea that provoked the Boston Tea Party was consigned. All of Copley’s family connections were Loyalists, and at a meeting described in his letter of 1 December 1773 he defended his wife’s relatives.
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