A study in contrast: Copley’s America, America’s Copley
His paintings of national icons such as Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams cemented Boston-born artist John Singleton Copley’s connection to the American Revolution, and to the country’s cultural pride. “Today, in museums across America, Copley’s brilliant portraits evoke patriotic fervor and rebellious optimism,” writes Jane Kamensky in her new book, “A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley.” But that connection was more complicated than it might now appear. In the spring of 1774 Copley sailed from Boston to London, never to return. When the fighting began, he followed it from an ocean away. Kamensky, a Harvard historian and Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, notes in her book that Copley did not share the politics of his sitters and that his detachment from the conflict mirrored the divided sentiment among many in his homeland....