Thomas Amory II

1753–1774 · 活動地

Boston

17 June 1768

Explains to West why he is not yet coming to Europe

Copley writes that he would go only with a very good prospect of doing as well there as at home: his present income of 300 guineas a year is a fair living in America, and his mother and young brother depend on him. West replies on 20 September that he has talked over Copley’s prospects with London artists, who agree that he has nothing to hazard.

1769年11月16日

Married: Susannah Farnum Clarke

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.

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.