Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum "TEA TALKS": John Singleton Copley & The Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum is thrilled to welcome special guest for this webinar: Tamar Avishai, the creator and host of the popular art history podcast, “The Lonely Palette”.
Boston’s own John Singleton Copley is often referred to as the finest portrait artist of colonial America. He painted the likenesses of many of the “patriot heroes” including Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Mercy Otis Warren, John Hancock, and Dr. Joseph Warren though he mostly chose to stay politically neutral. His 1769 marriage to Susanna “Sukey” Clarke placed him within one of Boston’s wealthiest merchant families. Copley’s father-in-law, Richard Clarke, and two of his sons, Jonathan and Isaac, were 3 of the 7 consignees for the East India Company during the famed Boston Tea Party. Like many of the merchants of the time, Clarke was interested in his wealth more so than any particular political side. Copley left Boston in 1774 to embark upon a European tour to study the great Masters and his family relocated to London with the outbreak of the American Revolution. As he expanded his surroundings, his paintings grew in size and scope. No longer solely a portrait painter, Copley began to find the fame that he desperately sought. History would take a rather biased look at his American works versus those produced while in Britain and would continue to paint a very black and white picture of the choices made by Patriots, Loyalists, and the politically neutral in colonial America.
More about Tamar Avishai and The Lonely Palette podcast:
Each episode of The Lonely Palette, creator and host Tamar Avishai picks an object du jour, interviews unsuspecting passers-by in front of it, and then dives deeply into the movement, the social context, the anecdotes, and anything and everything else that will make it as exciting to you as it is to her. www.thelonelypa...
Please note: This prerecorded webinar was originally broadcast on May 26th, 2021.