Lesson Plans
Unit Introduction

Image 24:

Thomas Gainsborough
British, 1727-1788
Man with Book Seated in a Landscape, ca. 1753
Oil on canvas, 24 x 20"

Memorial Art Gallery
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Fred W. Geib, 75.115

Image 25:

Joshua Reynolds
English, 1723-1792
Portrait of Miss Hoare, 1782
Oil on canvas, 36 3/16 x 28"

Memorial Art Gallery
George Eastman Collection of the University of Rochester, 77.1

Information:

John Singleton Copley had a great deal of respect and admiration for British artists. Despite his success as a portrait painter in America, Copley eventually moved to London before the Revolution began. He and his family's emigration allowed him become a part of the European art world. His move was also about his family's safety. It was Copley's father-in-law's tea that was dumped into the harbor at the Boston Tea Party.

Neither of these portraits is directly related to the About Face exhibit. Rather they are included to motivate students to look elsewhere in the museum and ask similar questions as those asked about the Nathaniel Hurd portrait. Both works are portraits of and by British people roughly contemporary with the Hurd portrait. These portraits are intended to show the students a different point of view concerning the British population. These are visual documents that can put faces to, and therefore humanize, the 'other side' in the American Revolution.

Vocabulary:

portrait - a work of art that represents a specific person.

sitter - the person who is the subject of the portrait.

Lesson:

John Singleton Copley and British Portraiture: Picturing history