The Reverend William Welsteed

3 de julio de 1738

Born

1753–1774 · Lugar de trabajo

Boston

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.

16 de noviembre de 1769

Married: Susannah Farnum Clarke

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.