"Unexpectedly, John Singleton Copley illuminated Boston's colonial sky," writes one of the authors of this volume. The son of poor Irish immigrants, Copley (1738-1815) became the supreme portraitist of the colonial era before he left his native Boston for England in 1774. Primarily in Boston, and to some extent in New York, Copley depicted contemporary merchant princes, clergymen, and military officers and their wives, as well as Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other political leaders. His splendidly painted portraits provided his sitters, Loyalists and revolutionaries alike, with the opulent images they craved and brought him spectacular material success.This book, which accompanies an important exhibition of Copley's work organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is the first major study of the artist published since 1966. Like the exhibition, it focuses on the large-scale paintings, miniatures, and pastels Copley executed before he moved to London, on the theory that his American oeuvre is unified by the circumstances of its production and is stylistically and intellectually distinct from his English pictures.

John Singleton Copley in America

Arts & Photography

Barratt, Carrie Rebora

Staiti, Paul

Rebora, Carrie

History & Criticism

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This book is in excellent condition

John Singleton Copley in America by Rebora, Carrie, Staiti, Paul, Hirshler, Erica E., Stebbins, (2013) Paperback

Troyen, Carol

Hirshler, Erica E.

Stebbins, Theodore E., Jr.

Individual Artists

Trompe l'oeil, French for "fool or deceive the eye", is a genre dating back to antiquity that has fascinated both painters and viewers from the Renaissance to the present day. Both witty and serious, it describes paintings that imitate natural appearances so convincingly that viewers momentarily mistake the objects depicted for the real thing. The moment of deception, however, is brief. Uncertainty over what is real and what is illusion is soon replaced by amusement at having been tricked and admiration for the artist's ingenuity and skill. Deceptions and Illusions explores the art of trompe l'oeil in more than 100 European and American paintings ranging in date from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries by such practitioners as Samuel van Hoogstraten, William M. Harnett, John Haberle, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. Organised thematically, the volume begins with works of art inspired by ancient prototypes and with paintings by early Renaissance artists whose close observation of nature was a prerequisite for eye-deceiving illusionism. It then presents the principal subjects of trompe l'oeil artists, beginning with images of letters, prints, dollar bills, and other essentially flat objects that appear to rest on the picture surface, and then moves to three-dimensional illusions in which objects appear to project or recede from the picture plane, blurring the boundary between real and fictitious space. Finally, the volume illustrates the legacy of the art of trompe l'oeil for twentieth-century artists. Five essays by experts in European and American art and in the science of seeing examine the phenomenon and persistence of trompe l'oeil over the centuries.

Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe L'Oeil Painting

Ebert-Schifferer, Sybille

Singer, Wolf

Veca, Alberto

Wheelock, Arthur K.

Lund Humphries Pub Ltd

A vibrant and original perspective on the American Revolution through the stories of the five great artists whose paintings animated the new American republic.
The images accompanying the founding of the United States--of honored Founders, dramatic battle scenes, and seminal moments--gave visual shape to Revolutionary events and symbolized an entirely new concept of leadership and government. Since then they have endured as indispensable icons, serving as historical documents and timeless reminders of the nation's unprecedented beginnings. 
As Paul Staiti reveals in Of Arms and Artists, the lives of the five great American artists of the Revolutionary period--Charles Willson Peale, John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, Benjamin West, and Gilbert Stuart--were every bit as eventful as those of the Founders with whom they continually interacted, and their works contributed mightily to America's founding spirit. Living in a time of breathtaking change, each in his own way came to grips with the history being made by turning to brushes and canvases, the results often eliciting awe and praise, and sometimes scorn. Ever since the passing of the last eyewitnesses to the Revolution, their imagery has connected Americans to 1776, allowing us to interpret and reinterpret the nation's beginning generation after generation. The collective stories of these five artists open a fresh window on the Revolutionary era, making more human the figures we have long honored as our Founders, and deepening our understanding of the whirlwind out of which the United States emerged.

Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters' Eyes

Bloomsbury Press

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