COPLEY, John Singleton, American painter: b. Boston, Mass., 3 July 1737; d. Lon don, England, 9 Sept. 1815. He was of Irish parentage and received his early training in en graving from his stepfather, Peter Pelham, a mezzotint engraver. In painting he was prac tically self-taught. His talent for drawing developed at an early age, and in 1760 he sent anonymously to Benjamin West in England a portrait called 'The Boy and the Flying Squirrel,' which, when exhibited, was highly praised by the best English artists of the tune. In 1769 he married the daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant, and became the recognized painter of Boston society. In 1774 he sailed for England, visited Italy and settled in Lon don, where he rose rapidly in popularity as a portrait painter, within a few years being elected an associate member and full member of the Royal Academy. Some of his most cele brated paintings are portraits of the English royal family; the 'Death of Lord Chatham,' now in the London National Gallery; 'Siege and Relief of Gibraltar,' in the council cham ber of the Guildhall; 'Major Pierson's Death on the Isle of Jersey' ; 'Surrender of Admiral De Winter to Lord Duncan); 'Charles I De manding the Five Impeached Members in the House of Commons' ; 'The Red Cross Knight' ; 'Mrs. Derby as Saint Cecilia.) His principal
American portraits are those of Samuel Adams and John Hancock, in the Boston Art Museum; Mrs. Ford, in the Boston Athenaeum; Mrs. Thomas Boylston and others, in Harvard Memorial Hall; Lady Wentworth and Mrs. Robert Harper, in the New York Public Li brary; Robert Izard and his wife, painted in Rome, now in the Boston Art Museum; the Copley Family and John Quincy Adams, in the Boston Art Museum. His son, Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, made a notable collection of his father's works, which was dispersed at public sale in 1864. Consult Perkins, 'Life of. S. Copley' (Boston 1873); Amory, 'Life of J. S. Copley) (Boston 1882) ; Isham, 'History of American Painting' (New York 1905).