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Identification and Creation

Object Number
H20
People
John Singleton Copley, American (Boston, MA 1738 - 1815 London, England)
Nicholas Boylston (1716 - 1771)
Frame by John Welch
Title
Nicholas Boylston (1716-1771)
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1773
Places
Creation Place: North America, United States, Massachusetts, Boston
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/299800

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
238.8 x 144.8 cm (94 x 57 in.)
framed: 281.9 x 179.1 x 16.5 cm (111 x 70 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Commissioned by the Harvard Corporation, 1773

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard University Portrait Collection, Painted at the request of the Harvard Corporation, 1773
Accession Year
1773
Object Number
H20
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Description
This is a copy after H90 (Copley, Nicholas Boylston, 1767)

Publication History

  • Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists: American Artist Life, Comprising Biographical and Critical Sketches of American Artists, Preceded by an Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of Art in America, Putnam (New York, NY, 1867), p. 72
  • Augustus Thorndyke Perkins, A Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley, J. R. Osgood & Company (Boston, MA, 1873), p. 38
  • William Howe Downes, "Boston Painters and Paintings, Part I: The Pre-Copleyites, Copley, Trumbull", The Atlantic Monthly (Boston, MA, July 1888), vol. 62 no. 369, pp. 89-98., p. 93
  • William Garrott Brown, A List of Portraits in the Various Buildings of Harvard University, Harvard University Library (Cambridge, MA, 1898), p. 9
  • Frank William Bayley, A Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley, The Garden Press, W. B. Libby (Boston, MA, 1910), pp. 21-22
  • Frank William Bayley, The Life and Works of John Singleton Copley: Founded on the Work of Augustus Thorndike Perkins, The Taylor Press (Boston, MA, 1915), pp. 64-65
  • Cuthbert Lee, Early American Portrait Painters: The Fourteen Principal Earliest Native-born Painters, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT, 1929), p. 74
  • Laura M. Huntsinger, Harvard Portraits: A Catalogue of Portrait Paintings at Harvard University, ed. Alan Burroughs, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1936), pp. 23-24
  • Barbara N. Parker and Anne Bolling Wheeler, John Singleton Copley: American Portraits in Oil, Pastel and Miniature, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA, 1938), pp. 44-45
  • Historical Records Survey, Division of Professional and Service Projects, Works Progress Administration, American Portraits, 1620-1825, found in Massachusetts, Volumes 1 and 2, Historical Records Survey (Boston, MA, 1939), p. 47, cat. 250
  • Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1966), vol. 1, pp. 43-44, 54-55, 90, 210, pl. 330
  • Louise Todd Ambler, Early Science at Harvard: Innovators and Their Instruments, 1765 - 1865, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, December 1969-January 1970), pp. 3, 74, cat. 3
  • Alison Shepherd Lewis, "John Singleton Copley and American Full-Length Portraits: The Project of Harvard Hall" (1969), Unpublished, pp. 13-14, 17
  • Louise Todd Ambler and Kenyon Castle Bolton, III, "American Painting at Harvard", Antiques (New York, NY, November 1972), vol. 102, no. 5, pp. 876-883, p. 876
  • Nina Fletcher Little, "Floor Coverings", American Art Journal (May 1975), vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 107-117, p. 112, ill.
  • Charles Montgomery and Patricia E. Kane, American Art: 1750-1800, Towards Independence, exh. cat., Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT, 1976), p. 97, fig. 48
  • Louise Todd Ambler, "Faces from Harvard's Past", Harvard Magazine (Cambridge, MA, March-April 1978), Vol. 80, pp. 33-41, p. 34, ill.
  • Robert F. Perkins, Jr. and William J. Gavin, III, Boston Athenaeum Art Exhibition Index, 1827-1874, The Library of the Boston Athenaeum (Boston, MA, 1980), p. 39
  • Sandra Grindlay, "Harvard's Portraits: An American Treasure", Harvard University Art Museums Review (Fall 1992), vol. II, no. 1, pp. 6-7, p. 6
  • Carrie Rebora and Paul J. Staiti, John Singleton Copley in America, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY, 1995), pp. 4, 93, 152, 225-226, fig. 135
  • Marc Giudicelli, "J.S. Copley's Blues: A Case of Blanching" (thesis (certificate in conservation), Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, 2000), Unpublished, pp. 1-47 passim
  • Phyllis Whitman Hunter, Purchasing Identity in the Atlantic World: Massachusetts Merchants, 1670-1780, Cornell University Press (Ithaca and London, 2001), p. 150, fig. 9
  • Margaret Pokorny, ed., Copley Square: The Story of Boston's Art Square, brochure, Friends of Copley Square (Boston, MA, 2002), p. 37, ill.
  • Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. and Melissa Renn, American Paintings at Harvard, Volume One: Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels by Artists Born before 1826, Yale University Press (U.S.) and Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge and New Haven, 2014), pp. 23, 143-144, 426, cat. 89, ill.
  • Ethan Lasser, "A Classroom in the Age of Enlightenment", The Magazine Antiques (New York, NY, 2017), Fig. 3
  • "A Clearer View of the Collections", Index Magazine, Harvard Art Museums (December 5, 2017), https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/article/a-clearer-view-of-the-collections, accessed December 12, 2017
  • Jonathan Shaw and Jennifer Carling, "The Lost Museum: Teachings of the Philosophy Chamber, Recreated", Harvard Magazine (Cambridge, MA, 2017), pp. 42-49, p. 42
  • Ethan Lasser, ed., The Philosophy Chamber: Art and Science in Harvard’s Teaching Cabinet, 1766–1820, exh. cat., Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2017), p. 85, Plate 21; p. 190 (detail) and p. 198 in Whitney Barlow Robles's "Flatness"
  • Nika Elder and Diana Seave Greenwald, "Enslaved Labor and Cultural Capital: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Copley's Colonial Patrons and Their Circum-Atlantic World", Winterthur Portfolio, The University of Chicago Press (Winter 2020), vol. 54, no. 4, pp.223-243, pp. 223-225, 237-239, repr. p. 242 as fig. 20

Exhibition History

Related Works

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu