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.