John Singleton CopleyAmerican, 1738–1815John Adams (1735-1826)
About the painting
Before serving as the first vice president and the second president of the United States, Harvard alumnus John Adams served as the new nation’s first ambassador to Great Britain. Adams befriended Copley in London, and the two collaborated on this symbolic grand portrait that commemorates Adams’s role in securing peace through diplomacy during the Revolutionary War. Copley was delighted with how the work turned out and kept the work to promote his skills. At Copley’s death, the painting came to the Adams family farm. Abigail Adams praised the portrait of her husband as “a very good likeness,” whereas the president, embarrassed by his youthful bravado, deemed the work “a piece of vanity.”
Harvard Art Museums
Particulars
- Accession number
- H74
Meanwhile, in the life of John Singleton Copley
The whole life1774–1815 · Workplace
London
c. 1781
Chambers rebukes Copley over the private showing of his picture
“The Death of the Earl of Chatham” made Copley’s name as a history painter, but Sir William Chambers, in an open letter, objected to its being shown privately ahead of the Royal Academy exhibition, accusing the artist of purveying it like a raree-show to sell prints or raffle the picture. Copley wrote a caustic reply one morning and threw it into the fire that evening; engravings from the picture later sold well in England and America.
5 December 1782
The Stars and Stripes in Elkanah Watson’s portrait
After listening to George III’s speech formally acknowledging American independence, Copley paints the Stars and Stripes with a bold hand on a ship in the background of Elkanah Watson’s portrait. Watson himself imagined it to be the first American flag hoisted in Old England.
