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John Greene

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John Greene

circa 1769
oil on canvas
49 1/8 in. x 39 1/2 in. (124.78 cm x 100.33 cm)
Currier Funds, 1935.4

John Singleton Copley
American
1738–1815

In commissioning John Singleton Copley to paint his portrait, the thirty-eight-year-old Boston merchant John Greene (1731-1781) sought the services of the most talented and successful painter in the city. During the years preceding this portrait, Copley had painted such notable residents of Boston as Nicholas Boylston, John Hancock, and Joseph Warren; his work was in such demand that he was able to command fourteen guineas for a three-quarter-length portrait such as this one.

Yet among Copley's sitters, John Greene was not an especially wealthy man-his income has been estimated at less than five hundred pounds a year. Copley characterizes him as a man of affairs, showing him in a setting he used for many of the other businessmen he painted in the late 1760s. As he had done with the fabulously wealthy Hancock in 1765, Copley posed Greene at a cloth-covered table, with a ledger and a pewter inkstand before him, his quill pen in his hand. But here the ledgers are small, and the trappings of success are modest. Greene sits in a simple Queen Anne chair, not an elaborately carved Chippendale; he wears neither a wig (the most expensive part of an eighteenth-century gentleman's costume, and thus an emblem of wealth) nor powder in his hair. His suit, a blue frock coat with matching waistcoat and breeches, trimmed with gold braid, is handsome and fashionable, yet a far cry from the opulent brocades and velvets worn in the portraits of Nicholas Boylston, Nathaniel Sparhawk, and other extremely wealthy merchants of Greene's day.

Despite his relatively modest means, Greene was active as a philanthropist. He was for many years a vestryman at Trinity Church in Boston and served as an administrator of the Greene Foundation, a fund for the support of assistant ministers of that church. He was also an active member of the Charitable Society, a Boston social club dedicated to good works. Copley suggests Greene's noble character by recording him with bright eyes and a genial expression; his posture-he sits erect and leans forward slightly in his chair-connotes a man of action and decision.

Copley also painted Greene's wife, Catherine, in 1769 (Cleveland Museum of Art). As was often the case in this era, the portraits were most likely conceived as a pair, yet husband and wife are not related by either setting or gesture. John Greene is seated in the kind of imaginary interior Copley used for many male portraits, a space whose importance-and by association, the importance of the sitter-is suggested by the massive column and the swag of drapery behind the table. In contrast, Catherine Greene stands before a fictional landscape, one hand at her face (to draw attention to her unbound hair, adorned with pearls and draped languorously across her shoulder), the other holding the silk wrap that forms the outer layer of her loosely draped gown. Copley here follows eighteenth-century custom in associating the male with the world of business and the female with the world of nature; his perceptive characterization of John Greene and his sensuous rendering of Catherine elevate the portraits above the conventional.

CT


REFERENCE

Jules David Prown. John Singleton Copley. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. Vol. 1, pp. 71-72.


Exhibition
On loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY for many years (before coming to Currier).

1930 Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, "American Colonial and Early Federal Art." Feb. 4 - March 2.

1932 Colonial Dames of America, New York, NY, Exhibition of rare colonial portraits.

1935 Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, "American Painting and Sculpture of the 18th, 19th & 20th Centuries." Jan. 29 - Feb. 19.

1938 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, "Works of John Singleton Copley in Commemoration of the 200th Anniversary of His Birth." Feb. 1 - March 15, no. 36.

1949 Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, "Colony to Nation." April 21- June 19.

1960 Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute Art Gallery, Utica, NY, "Inaugural Exhibition: Art Across America." Oct. 15 - Dec. 31.

1968 Hopkins Center Art Gallery, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Exchange loan. Jan.16 - Feb. 18.

1972 Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, "Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts from the Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire." May 14 - June 20.

1993 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "Celebrate America! Three Centuries of American Art from the Currier." June 19 - Aug. 29.

1995-1997 "American Art from the Currier Gallery of Art." Organized by the Currier Gallery of Art and the American Federation of Arts. Traveled to: Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, Dec. 3, 1995 - Jan. 28, 1996; Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL, Mar. 15 - Apr. 7, 1996; Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, VA, Aug. 10 - Oct. 13, 1996; The Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN, Feb. 2 - Mar. 30, 1997; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA, Apr. 25 - June 22, 1997; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, July 18 - Sept. 8, 1997, cat. no. 1.

2006-2007 Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Extended Loan of European and American Paintings. Aug. 2006 - Nov. 2007.

Provenance
Greene Family
Samuel Ward
John Ward, 1844
Richard Ward (brother of John Ward), died 1874
William Ward (brother of John and Richard Ward) and sold in 1913 or 1914
Julia Ward Howe and her sister Mrs. Luther Terry (1874-1910), about 1881
Professor and Mrs. Henry Marion Howe (son of Julia Ward Howe)
Fannie Gay Howe (daughter of Henry Marion Howe)
Milch Gallery
Macbeth Gallery, New York, NY
Purchased by Currier Gallery of Art, 1935


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