John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)
Mrs. Daniel Hubbard (Mary Greene)
INV-5978
John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)c. 1764
Mrs. Daniel Hubbard (Mary Greene)
John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815) →american colonialpaintingamerican arts
Date
c. 1764
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
127.6 × 100.9 cm (50 1/4 × 39 3/4 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Art Institute of Chicago Purchase Fund
John Singleton Copley was largely self-taught, his only formal training from his stepfather Peter Pelham, an English artist who specialized in mezzotint engraving. He nonetheless garnered considerable success as a portrait painter before the Revolutionary War. The sitter here, Mary Greene Hubbard, was a member of Boston’s merchant class (Copley’s portrait of her husband, Daniel Hubbard [1947.27], is also in the Art Institute collection). Her pose, gown, and background were precisely copied from a British engraving of a noblewoman, yet Copley distinguished the work as his own by capturing the figure’s individual features as well as the surfaces and colors of the luxurious fabrics. A decade later, he left colonial Massachusetts for England to further his career and simultaneously escape the strong political divides among family, friends, and patrons amid the impending Revolution.
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