Painter (1738–1815)

John Singleton Copley was an American painter of portraits and historical subjects. He is generally acclaimed as the finest artist of colonial America.

Synopsis

John Singleton Copley was born July 3, 1738 in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1766 he exhibited Boy with a Squirrel at the Society of Artists in London. When political and economic conditions in Boston began to deteriorate (Copley's father-in-law was the merchant to whom the tea that provoked the Boston Tea Party was consigned), Copley left the country in June 1774 and established a home in England.