John Singleton Copley: American Painter in European Art

Colonial Boston and the World That Shaped Copley

One of the foremost painters of his generation, the American John Singleton Copley brought the experiences of the New World to the traditions of European art. Born in Boston in 1738, Copley grew up in a world that, in his words, regarded painting as "no more than any other useful trade, as they sometimes term it, like that of a Carpenter tailor, or shew maker, not as one of the most noble Arts in the World."

The American colonies were provincial adjuncts of the British Empire. Massachusetts, like most of the Northern colonies, was commercial in outlook. Boston was a growing center of trade and small crafts, but not much more. Art and artistry were still thought of as something alien to the rough-and-ready world that was still being carved out of the pristine wilderness. The Puritan ethos dominated. The principles of hard work, simplicity, and frugality were more characteristic of the culture than creativity for its own sake or an understanding of art as a necessary prerequisite to the pursuit of a higher civilization.

Painting, such as it existed in Copley's Boston, was intimately linked to general attitudes toward wealth and status. According to the Puritan view, one's material success served as a signpost of one's spiritual well-being; the more one was favored by God, the greater would be one's material success and all of its outward manifestations. To this end, painting was seen primarily as the art of portraiture — a cataloging of the relative worth of an individual or individuals. Copley would encounter a considerable amount of portrait art in Boston, though not always of the highest quality. What there was of true "fine art" would be found in the form of engravings in the homes of the wealthy and prominent.

The Limner Tradition and Early European Influences

As a result, the highly talented youngster was forced to fall back on his own devices, studying the copies of European art that came his way and attempting to make sense of the limner tradition that then represented the American colonial version of high art. Not true folk painting, which is unchanging, the limners who had dominated American portraiture since the earliest days of the colonies were actually attempting — without any formal training — to copy the styles and techniques they saw reproduced in the European engravings with which Copley was familiar:

The limner, as an untrained artist, presented reality conceptually, as idea, and pinned it down with two-dimensional surface patterns characterized by linear boundedness and equal emphasis of parts… though generically primitive, was essentially archaic, having within it the potential for change and development.

Mars, Venus, and Vulcan: An American Vision of Classical Myth

And so too did Copley, who quickly developed his own interpretation of the limner style fused with his attempts to copy the techniques of formally trained European masters. What Copley learned from the limners' painstaking attempts at delineating the sheen and texture of rich draperies, and their almost microscopic attention to every detail of costume and setting, was the connection between these elements and the mercantile ethos of the land of his birth. From an early date, Copley was interpreting the techniques of European painting within the context of New England life and society.

Mars, Venus, and Vulcan: The Forge of Vulcan (1754) is an early attempt to apply an American view to a quintessentially European subject. In this work, it is Copley's choice of subject matter that reveals his aspirations to the European academic tradition. Classical mythology had played a central role in European painting since the Renaissance. Indeed, in the eighteenth century, as earlier, contemporary subjects were often presented in classical garb and settings, as if to say that only an idealized version of the world could properly show the true place of persons and events in the grand sweep of history. Myths are told and retold down through the ages because they encapsulate some ultimate truth. Their messages resonate with generations utterly unfamiliar with the actual circumstances of the time and place of the original story. The characters in myth, and the actions they undertake, are stand-ins for archetypal individuals and themes. Mars, Venus, and Vulcan can easily be seen as personifications of Copley's America — a new place and culture born of battle and passion, transmuted in the forge, the Old World reborn as the New.

The composition itself centers on the figure of Venus. The viewer's eye is drawn to the image of the beautiful woman in shimmering drapery — an inheritance of the limners. She, the figure representing love or passion, is the primary one in the narrative. Vulcan almost disappears into the background beside her; the coloration of his skin and costume causes him to blend in with the natural rock. He is a thing of nature, unobtrusive, but ever at her side (in myth they are husband and wife). In a further use of a European device, Copley sets a cupid or cherub floating above Venus, and one to her side in front of Vulcan. The aerial putti were a common bit of purposeful decoration in European scenic painting, functioning almost as armorial bearings in many a city view or battle scene. They bear the "signs" that identify the scene and serve in some sense as a bridge between the earthly and heavenly spheres. One in the air and one on the ground only enhances this linkage between the temporal and momentary on the one hand, and the sacred or eternal on the other, with the third, recumbent figure providing still further grounding.

The lowest cupid is, in fact, a fitting herald for the entrance into the scene of Mars in full battle dress. Surely belligerent Mars does not belong in this scene, any more than does Vulcan on the other side. Venus is strangely torn between two extremes and fits with neither. Her luxuriant pose, the empty bowl, the arrows she holds nimbly in her hands — she is a voluptuous image in the midst of potential conflict. Copley had to have recognized that in painting Venus he was painting America. But did this image depict America as he, a New Englander, saw her, or as she was seen by those across the ocean in the mother country? Copley's Venus can be read as a prize fought over by two opposing forces — nature on the one hand, and battle-girded civilization, i.e., Europe, on the other. From the perspective of a colonist, she is a well-endowed prize with multiple opportunities, and perhaps too many suitors. The cave-like setting of the forge with the wedge of sky beyond offers the hope of freedom.

As befits a student of European art learning from inferior models, Copley's Mars, Venus, and Vulcan is not academically perfect. The composition is somewhat crude and not perfectly balanced. It, like Copley himself, was crying out for the opportunity to learn more, to be enlightened. The picture can be read as an image of the artist's yearning to belong fully within the European tradition while still, in America, being bound by the provincialism of the land of his birth and upbringing.