Objectives:

Students will

• observe and compare 18^th century British portraits with those made by John Singleton Copley.
• write a creative story about a person in one of the Memorial Art Gallery's portraits.
• conduct research to explore the cultural climate of the portrait in order to write a historically accurate story.

Lesson Times:

If you attend the About Face exhibit at the Memorial Art Galery, this lesson consists of suggested pre-visit, visit, and post-visit activities.

Vocabulary:

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

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

Prior Knowledge:

Students should have begun study of colonial America, with some basic background in pre-Revolutionary Boston.

Materials:

1. Images

Image #1

John Singleton Copley
American, 1737-1815
Nathaniel Hurd, ca. 1765
Oil on canvas, 29 3/8 x 24 5/8"

Memorial Art Gallery
Marion Stratton Gould Fund

Image #2

John Singleton Copley
American, 1737-1815
Nathaniel Hurd, ca. 1765
Oil on canvas, 30 3/8 x 25 3/8"

Cleveland Museum of Art
Gift of John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Image #3

John Singleton Copley
American, 1737-1815
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin (Sarah Morris), 1773
Oil on ticking, 60 ½ x 48"

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 1900.2

Image #11

John Singleton Copley
American, 1737-1815
Paul Revere, 1768
Oil on canvas, 35 x 28 ½"

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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 :

Sir 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

2. Picturing history worksheet (HTML or Word)

Lesson: Previsit

1. Project Slides #24 & 25. Allow the students to take some time to look at these two portraits.
2. Begin asking the class questions to help focus their looking:

• What details do you see?
• Where are these people from?
• When were these portraits painted?
• What do the visual elements (setting, facial expression, pose, clothing, etc.) of these portraits tell you about the sitters' personality, culture, and class status?
• Are these people you would want to know?

3. Choose one or two of John Singleton Copley's portraits of American sitters (Slides #1-3 and 11) to compare with these two British portraits.

• Can you tell which are British and which are American? What is your evidence?
• How are these two British portraits similar to the portraits by Copley? Explain.
• Are there any blatant differences between these two portraits and those by John Singleton Copley?
• Where do you see the most dramatic differences between the British and American portraits?
• Do you see it in the color, light, brushstroke, organization, size, gesture, mood, expression, etc.?

4. Discuss with the students how American colonials followed the trends and fashions of English society. The colonies were still very reliant upon England and there were many similarities between the two countries at the time.

Lesson in the Exhibit:

1. Next, while the students are at the Gallery, they are to find a portrait other than the ones previously discussed. On the Picturing history worksheet, the students will carefully document the portrait they choose. Make sure they spend a good deal of time looking at the portrait. They will need to be as detailed as possible in describing their portrait because they will be writing about the portrait after their gallery visit. They will answer such questions as:

• Is it a portrait of a woman or a man?
• What is going on in this portrait? What makes you say that?
• How big is this portrait? Do you think it would go in someone's living room, or maybe a palace, or bedroom? What makes you think that?
• What is s/he wearing? Describe the style, pattern, materials, and textures.
• Where is s/he set?
• What kind of colors do you see in this portrait?
• Is the sitter looking out at the viewer? Explain.
• What does this person's facial expression convey to you? What kinds of mood do you get from looking at this portrait?
• Does this person look young/old, wealthy/poor, important/not important, happy/sad, nice/mean, smart/stupid, etc.? Explain your answer in detail.
• What do you think this person would do for a living? For fun? Explain your answer.
• Would you like to get to know this person? Why or why not?

2. After the gallery visit, students will use the information collected on their worksheet to begin thinking of a story based around the person in the portrait.
3. The students will do research on the culture and time period of the portrait. From there, students with have a context in which to place their person when they write a fictional biography, narrative story, expose newspaper article, or first person stream of consciousness about the person in their chosen portrait.

Follow-up (Option 1):
Research about life in Boston leading up to the Revolution. What was it like to live in the city in such a turbulent time? What did people do for entertainment? What kinds of clothes did people wear? What were the different social classes, and how did their lives differ?

Research resources:
Brenner, Barbara. If You Were There in 1776. Simon and Schuster for Young Readers, New York, 1994.

Moore, Kay. If You Lived at the Time of the American Revolution. Scholastic, New York, 1997.

Suggested Websites:

• http://www.bham.wednet.edu/colonial.htm "Colonial American History Resources"
  *This is another great resource site including links to sites related to famous historical figures, colonial skills, religion in the colonies, etc.
• http://americanhistory.si.edu/hohr/springer/index.htm "You be the Historian"
  *Looks at primary source documents (both texts and objects), to try to figure out what a late 18th century colonial family was like. Available for printing is 'Questions for Future Historians' worksheet for further analysis and discussion. 'In Conclusion' section has historians giving their opinions on the family based on their study of the primary source documents.
• http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/game/ "Road to Revolution: A Revolutionary Game"

Follow-up (Option 2):
The students can do the following research on the experiences of Loyalists before and after the Revolution. How many Loyalists were there in the American colonies prior to and during the American Revolution? How many moved back to England? How were Loyalists who stayed in the colonies treated?

Evaluation:
Students will be assessed on their ability to observe and describe the features of the portrait they choose at the Memorial Art Gallery. Students should be able to research the historical time period of their chosen portrait in order to contextualize their creative writing assignment.

Summary:
Students will compare and contrast two 18th century British portraits with Copley's portraits of Nathaniel Hurd. During their visit to the Memorial Art Gallery, students will each choose one of the Gallery's many portraits to write about. After the Gallery visit, students will research the historical and cultural context of the portrait in order to contextualize their creative writing assignment. The exercise will provide a model for the necessity of combining observation with historical research when approaching historical art and objects.