L. Kent Wolgamott: Sheldon displays impressive Copley portrait that’s on loan from Boston museum
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When an art museum lends one of its signature works to an exhibition that will take it away for months, it’s very common that the museum that has put together the show will send one of its best pieces to the lending museum to take its place, swapping quality for quality.
Last year, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery sent “Room in New York,” its most famous painting, to Boston to be part of an Edward Hopper retrospective that started its tour at the Museum of Fine Arts and is now on view at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In exchange for the Hopper, the Museum of Fine Arts sent John Singleton Copley’s 1769 portrait of Nicholas Boylston to Sheldon, where it hangs in the portrait gallery that is the first area you enter in the museum’s permanent collection galleries.
As a museum dedicated to American art, Sheldon couldn’t have picked a better piece to have on its wall for a few months than Copley’s portrait. It’s a fine example of his work.
“No one was better than Copley,” said University of Nebraska-Lincoln painting professor Aaron Holz. “He was the best in America at the time.”
Holz and UNL art historian Wendy Katz talked about “Nicholas Boylston” last Sunday at Sheldon, putting the work in context as a painting and in its time.
Copley (1738-1815) grew up on Boston’s Long Wharf and was taught painting and engraving by his artist stepfather. By the time he was a teenager, the talented young painter had begun to monopolize the portrait business among Boston’s elite, who could afford to pay for a painting of themselves.
Nicholas Boylston, a successful businessman, was one of those who could easily pay for a painting — the vest that he wears in the portrait likely cost as much as Copley was paid for making the picture, Katz said.
Based on what is known about Copley’s working methods, Boylston would have sat for 15 or 16 sittings of six hours each as Copley painstakingly did his work. “Copley took forever to do this picture,” Katz said.
The 1769 Boylston portrait is actually the second of three versions of the painting. The first, done in 1767, uses bolder, primary colors and shows a ship in the background, an acknowledgment of how the importer of British goods made his fortune.
Two years later, the ship is gone and the colors are more muted secondary and tertiary colors. The emphasis on Boylston’s work can still be found in the ledger books under his left arm. But toning down the painting may have had something to do with politics in addition to being an artistic choice to highlight Boylston’s face.
By 1769, the unrest that would become the American Revolution was stirring in Boston. As an importer who depended on the British for his business, Boylston was on the opposite side of the patriotic firebrands. That didn’t stop him from associating with the patriots.
Samuel Adams, however, later scorned Boylston as “an enemy to your country” and, in his diaries, John Adams ridiculed Boylston as a man trying to be an American version of a British aristocrat.
Copley, who was a loyalist, was clearly at ease painting Boylston, Holz said.
He also did portraits of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, in 1772 and 1770 respectively. “You might say that Samuel Adams is a more significant portrait, but he (Copley) didn’t identify with Sam Adams,” Holz said. “He identified with Nick.”
In doing so, he captured Boylston’s aristocracy and confidence in the portrait while managing to balance the 18th century dichotomy between individualism and conformity to social convention, Katz said.
In the painting, Boylston is wearing a velvet turban to keep his shaved head warm. More than judges wore wigs in the 18th century. If you were a successful, powerful man in commerce or politics, you wore a wig. Boylston’s appearance in the turban conveys his status, but also shows that he is his own man by acknowledging the power he has without overtly showing it.
Copley packed up his paints and left Boston in 1774 and became an English painter the next year. He painted what is arguably his most famous work, “Watson and the Shark” in 1778, then became a history painter of little distinction for the remainder of his life.
He never returned to North America and so is an American painter who never set foot in the United States.
While history informs “Nicholas Boylston,” like all great art, it stands outside of its time without context of artist and subject. Composed to highlight the face utilizing strong triangles, “Nicholas Boylston” displays a mastery of detail and craftsmanship, especially in the painting of the fabrics that surround and cover the subject.
Holz, who does portraiture, marvels at the painting:
“I really think, ‘Wow, this is an impressive portrait.’ Look at the silk. Look at how much paint is in his shirt underneath the robe, look at how the strokes are sitting there. They haven’t been pushed down. It’s really physical for Copley.”
“Nicholas Boylston” will be at Sheldon until early April, according to Karen Janovy, the museum’s curator of education. Those who are interested in the history of American painting or just want to see a fine 18th century portrait that won’t be around here again should stop by in the next month to get a look at Copley’s work.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.
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