1
00:00:01,974 --> 00:00:04,190
John Singleton Copley, A Boy with a Flying Squirrel (Henry Pelham), 1765

2
00:00:05,298 --> 00:00:06,406
So, imagine wanting to be an artist,

3
00:00:06,406 --> 00:00:14,214
but you live in a city where there are virtually no artists, no art schools, no art museums, no galleries

4
00:00:14,214 --> 00:00:17,717
and no one who wants to buy serious paintings.

5
00:00:17,717 --> 00:00:22,639
This is precisely the situation John Singleton Copley found himself in, in Boston the 1760's.

6
00:00:22,639 --> 00:00:27,098
We're looking at a potrait of Copley's half brother

7
00:00:27,098 --> 00:00:31,556
This is Henry Pelham and the painting is called 'Boy with Flying Squirrel'

8
00:00:31,556 --> 00:00:35,550
So for some body who is largely self taught, the painting is pretty remarkable,

9
00:00:35,550 --> 00:00:39,373
my gaze first goes to his face, that wonderful red curtain,

10
00:00:39,373 --> 00:00:43,305
that gathers my attention and frames that face so beautifully, but when i'm done there

11
00:00:43,305 --> 00:00:48,228
my eye runs down his shoulder, down his arm and to his hand

12
00:00:48,228 --> 00:00:52,547
and just look at the precision with which those fingertips are rendered

13
00:00:52,547 --> 00:00:56,030
and they so beautifully and loosely hold that gold chain.

14
00:00:56,030 --> 00:01:01,138
My eye then runs down, of course to the squirrel, its wonderfully cute and its nibbling on a little nut

15
00:01:01,138 --> 00:01:05,643
which then links up to the area where his dark coat on his back

16
00:01:05,643 --> 00:01:07,825
meet with the white coat of his belly

17
00:01:07,825 --> 00:01:13,305
which mirrors the edge of the sidrous cuff. And then on the cuff, on one side you have the

18
00:01:13,305 --> 00:01:16,556
light catching and on the near side you have that area in shadow

19
00:01:16,556 --> 00:01:19,250
that just plays beautifully alternating against itself

20
00:01:19,250 --> 00:01:22,547
so while this is a portrait of Copley's half brother , its also

21
00:01:22,547 --> 00:01:31,138
a kind of demonstration piece. By 1765 when Copley painted this he was a well regarded professional potrait painter

22
00:01:31,138 --> 00:01:37,640
in Boston but he wanted to be more. Copley also knew that portrait painting was actually the bottom

23
00:01:37,640 --> 00:01:44,467
of a hierarchy of subjects created by the academies in Europe, the highest paintings being

24
00:01:44,467 --> 00:01:49,389
paintings of religion and mythology and history, portraiture and still life being the lowest.

25
00:01:49,389 --> 00:01:54,312
But it was portraits that people wanted in new American cities

26
00:01:54,312 --> 00:02:01,139
Right, so the merchant class in boston, the wealthy elite had begun to really recognize the value of portraying themselves

27
00:02:01,139 --> 00:02:06,061
But Copley wanted to push beyond that. Copley knew that Europe painting was more

28
00:02:06,061 --> 00:02:10,148
and so this painting was actually made, as you said as a demonstration piece

29
00:02:10,148 --> 00:02:13,967
to see if he could hold his own with the European academies

30
00:02:13,967 --> 00:02:18,879
So he had this packed up in someone's luggage who was going off to London

31
00:02:18,879 --> 00:02:25,891
and there it was pretty well received by Benjamin West, an American painter who was living in London and was pretty succesfull

32
00:02:25,891 --> 00:02:30,489
and by sir Joshua Reynolds who was president of the Royal Academy in England

33
00:02:30,489 --> 00:02:33,043
so the first thing we might notice is that we are not looking at the

34
00:02:33,043 --> 00:02:36,089
front of the figures face, we are looking at him from the side

35
00:02:36,089 --> 00:02:40,527
so we think that Copley did this he wanted to show that he could paint not just portraits

36
00:02:40,527 --> 00:02:43,585
but also genre paintings where scenes of everyday life

37
00:02:43,585 --> 00:02:48,568
i think copley was also really showing off what he could do with fore shortening

38
00:02:48,568 --> 00:02:51,619
which is really a difficult thing to do if you look at

39
00:02:51,619 --> 00:02:57,099
the sitters right hand its just perfectly fore shortened as is the corner of the table.

40
00:02:57,099 --> 00:03:01,650
when this painting goes to England, Sir Joshua Reynold does praise it

41
00:03:01,650 --> 00:03:08,058
but he says , before too long he better come to London and get some real training

42
00:03:08,058 --> 00:03:15,071
here before your manner and taste are corrupted or fixed by working in this little way

43
00:03:15,071 --> 00:03:22,548
in Boston which i think, makes sense because the way that England ruled as this important artistic presence

44
00:03:22,548 --> 00:03:29,374
Copley felt that the situation in Boston was so inhospitable that he said artists retreated like

45
00:03:29,374 --> 00:03:35,319
shoemakers. So, Copley is clearly aware of the limitations of Boston, limitations of the colonies

46
00:03:35,319 --> 00:03:39,786
He's aware that portraiture which he does is a low form of art but

47
00:03:39,786 --> 00:03:44,607
he's also, i think in a way, very practical. he knows that this is what people want, and

48
00:03:44,607 --> 00:03:48,762
he's able to do it masterfully and beautifully

49
00:03:48,762 --> 00:03:56,870
but there is a lingering sense that he is not painting the grand history, and religious and mythological paintings

50
00:03:56,870 --> 00:04:00,536
of the European tradition and maybe cant compete on that level.

51
00:04:01,970 --> 99:59:59,999
so we have this beautiful and ambitious painting that situates John Singleton Copley in this very specific historical moment