Samuel Barrett

Details

JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY (1738-1815)
Samuel Barrett
the reverse bears an old, partially legible pencil inscription: Samuel Barrett XXX from 1738 and died August 2? 1798 when 60 years XXX XXX of yellow fever then very revalent in Boston. He married Elizabeth Salisbury XXX his second wife.
oil on copper
5¼ x 4½ in.

Provenance

George B. Foster, Montreal

Literature

J.D. Prown, John Singleton Copley: In America 1738-1774 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966), vol. I, p. 208, fig. 246.

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Lot Essay

Dated to circa 1765-1770, the present lot is a rare and intimate example of John Singleton Copley's portraiture in miniature. Painted in oil on copper, it is one of only a small number of portraits executed in this medium in Boston before Copley immigrated to London in 1774.

The sitter, Samuel Barrett, was a prominent Boston lawyer and Copley's brother-in-law. Barrett graduated from Harvard University in 1757 and, after receiving a law degree from Yale in 1760, married Mary Clarke, the eldest daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant, in 1761. Copley wed Mary Clarke's sister, Susanna, in 1769. During his engagement, Copley executed this portrait miniature and an oil on copper miniature of Mary Clarke Barrett, presumably as a pair.

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