Fogg exhibit reveals the toil behind some Copley treasuresPage 2 of 2 -- The paint on the Hancock portrait has thinned over time so that the pentimenti show through. The naked eye can now see that he painted an upholstered chair over part of the original architectural background.
Copley also moved Hancock's feet, and possibly his hat as well. These changes are something of a revelation found during recent scrutiny of the picture. Copley had been known for careful preparatory studies often composed on a grid that could be enlarged and transferred to a canvas without much alteration. Here, he seems to have favored trial and error. Copley went to England just when the issues that led to the American Revolution were coming to a boil. Although there has been speculation about his political sympathies, Orcutt dismisses them, writing in the show's brochure that "Copley considered himself neither a patriot nor a Tory, but an artist." He made the move to London at the behest of another American painter making a splash there, Benjamin West. Copley's 1776-80 portrait of West shows a distinguished, fine-featured man. In later years, though, the two ended up as rivals, vying for patronage. In 1783, Copley was chosen over West to paint "The Siege of Gibraltar," a giant work, two stories high, still in the Guildhall Art Gallery of the Corporation of London. The usual debut of such a monumental painting was at the Royal Academy. Copley was too entrepreneurial for that. Instead, he put "The Siege" in a giant tent, charged admission to see it, and offered viewers the chance to buy an engraving of the picture, thus lining his pockets while disseminating the image and adding luster to his reputation. The self-produced show became his standard way to unveil a history painting. Ultimately, though, its novelty faded, as did public interest in his subjects. Faced with insufficient patronage, the artist suffered huge financial losses. The Fogg couldn't bring over "The Siege of Gibraltar," but the museum does own three preparatory portraits Copley made for it during a visit to Hanover to record the faces of the German officers who had participated in the battle. They're individuals, their images fresh and forceful, and they assume the poses Copley used in the final work. The trek to Hanover indicates the diligence of Copley's research and the contest between accuracy and artistry in his work. In the paintings of relatively recent events, with the players still alive, he had first-person accounts to help. But the incidents in the two big pictures at the Fogg took place in the 1600s, long before Copley was born. To prepare to paint the picture of Charles I, he traveled to England's great country houses to copy portraits of the characters in the episode, many of them painted by his hero, Van Dyck. The likenesses are there, as true to life as he could make them under the circumstances. Sometimes, though, he'd have to alter the age of the participants, as when a portrait depicted a 60-year-old man who was 30 at the time of the event in the painting. The compositions couldn't reflect the reality of the occasion, a century-plus old. Here Copley had to use his imagination. He created high drama in this pivotal incident in the reign of Charles I, when the king went up against the House of Commons, a confrontation that ultimately led to revolution and the monarch's beheading. Copley created a tense composition, lit for dramatic effect. It is to most history paintings of the era what the high drama of Rembrandt's "The Nightwatch" is to all those other, endlessly dull, group portraits of civil militia by lesser artists. Viewing the finished "Charles I" painting, Queen Charlotte commented, "You have chosen, Mr. Copley, a most unfortunate subject for the exercise of your pencil." The picture was decidedly anti-royalist. Harvard's unfinished "Monmouth" was equally rebellious. The illegitimate son of Charles II, the Protestant Monmouth planned to overthrow his Catholic uncle, James II. But Monmouth was instead captured and sent to his death. There were two conflicting accounts of his final meeting with the king. In one, he grovels. In the other, he is courageous and noble. The latter is the version Copley used, the hero bravely facing death, chin up, rather than divulging the names of his accomplices. The great accolade bestowed on American painters who visited Britain and the continent in Copley's day was a comparison with a European master. So Washington Allston was "the American Titian," West was "the American Raphael," and Copley was "the American Van Dyck." Toward the end of his life, the American Van Dyck wanted to return to America. His wife did not, so they stayed in England. Although he never came back to Boston, it was important to him that at least one of the great history paintings he made in England cross the ocean to his hometown.
None other than President John Quincy Adams lobbied to have the "Charles I" in Boston. In 1859, decades after Copley's death, it finally arrived at the BPL, where, in all its new glory, it returns in the fall. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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