Day 278 - Copley

 December 27, 2021

Gallery 748 is a treasure in itself. It houses five oil portraits by Copley, three of adults and two of children, and I find all but one of them quite wonderful.  He was clearly a master of technique,  but what strikes me is that he made no effort to prettify or glamorize his subjects, although the luxurious fabrics of their garments and the handsome furnishings of their homes - e.g., a gleaming mahogany table, a studded armchair - make their social status evident.  Instead, the portraits seem to capture something essential about the subjects' characters. One of the portraits is of Hannah Winthrop, who was 45 when she sat for the painting.  The caption notes that her husband, John, was a Harvard mathematician, and the couple was known for cultivating rare fruit (in the portrait she holds a nectarine). She is shown as plump and rather plain, but what shines through as she gazes out at the viewer is her intelligence; she looks like a truly interesting person.  It occurs to me that this may be the Winthrop for whom Winthrop House at Harvard was named.  (It turns out it was named for both this John Winthrop and his great-grandfather, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.)

Today's work is a 1782 portrait, measuring very approximately 52" X 46",  of 12-year-old Midshipman Augustus Brine, who enlisted in the Royal Navy following the example of his father,  Admiral James Brine. Did the boy have a choice, I wonder? In any event, he looks out at us proudly. His three-quarter-length figure is set against a background so dark and abstract that it takes me a moment (and reading the placard) to realize that it's the hull of a ship; the roiling sea in the background is conveyed by five wavy brush strokes. The scene is illuminated from the left, so that the right side of the boy's face and body, the white cuff of his left sleeve, and the distant whitecaps are well lit, while much of the rest is in shadow. I admire the way that Copley has captured the varied textures of the boy's clothes - his fine linen shirt,  dark velvet jacket, and supple suede (?) vest and breeches. 

In 1774, Copley, I read, left Boston, his birthplace,  for England, where at first he was immensely successful, although he died in debt. That means that before his death in 1815, he witnessed two wars between his native and adoptive countries. To which did he owe greater allegiance, I wonder? Or did he just try to appear neutral?