: "Process and Paradox: The Historical Pictures of John Singleton
Copley" is on exhibit at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum through August
29.
Audiences will have an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover
John Singleton Copley's working methods through preparatory works
such as drawings, oil sketches and a full-size unfinished canvas.
This exhibition of works by Copley reveal several of the artist's
most important history paintings from his long and much traveled
career. Bringing many preparatory works together for the first
time, "Process and Paradox" includes approximately 25 important
pieces from the Harvard collection with several on loan for this
rare gathering. "Charles I" (1782-95) and "Monmouth" (circa 1795)
were discovered while undergoing treatment and cleaning at the
Fogg's Straus Center for Conservation.
Harvard University is noted for its colonial portraits by the
Boston artist Copley (1738-1815), which he executed before he
left for England in 1774. It is less known that the Fogg Art
Museum also has a rich trove of preparatory works for the history
paintings that he made in England during the second half of his
career.
Curators and conservators collaborated to study Copley's
development from his early American portraits to the large-scale
compositions of his English career. Their findings provide clues
about his creative process and clarify the inherent paradoxes in
the genre of history painting that he chose to pursue. This
exhibition of approximately 25 works is organized by Kimberly
Orcutt, assistant curator of American art at Harvard's Fogg Art
Museum.
The Fogg Art Museum is at 32 Quincy Street. For information,
617-495-9400 or artmuseums.Harvard.edu.
