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, 44.2

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

Information:

We do not know why the portrait of Nathaniel Hurd in the Memorial Art Gallery is incomplete. There are obvious differences between this portrait and the completed version at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In the portrait of Hurd owned by the MAG, the faraway gaze of the sitter hints at a thoughtful unselfconscious personality. In addition, Hurd is also represented in the work clothes of a colonial silversmith, with his waistcoat and collar open and his shirtsleeves rolled up. Portraits painted by John Singleton Copley for the upper class of colonial Boston emphasized their material wealth through rich clothing and settings. This portrait of Nathaniel Hurd would have been uncommon at the time in that his interior life and manual labor appear to be the main focus. The subject and unfinished state of this portrait raise interesting questions. Is this portrait incomplete because Hurd rejected this unidealized image of himself? Would this have been a portrait for public display or for a private, intimate setting?

The Hurd portrait owned by the Cleveland Museum of Art is quite different from the MAG’s. In this image, Hurd is wearing a fashionable Turkish turban and banyan (a lounge coat associated with gentlemen of leisure at the time). He is depicted as an alert, confident individual squarely meeting the viewers’ eyes. Some people notice the apparent addition of weight visible in the Cleveland’s Hurd portrait. This ‘fattening up’ of the sitter was a common device of Copley’s when painting male sitters. At this time, fat was a sign of beauty, health, and financial success (Staiti, p. 56). In this case the weighty appearance of Hurd in the Cleveland portrait might act together with his much fancier attire in shaping Hurd’s identity as a prosperous tradesman.

Vocabulary:

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

silversmith – one whose occupation is making and repairing articles of silver.

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

identity – the characteristics and qualities of a person, considered collectively and regarded as essential to that person’s self-awareness.

Sources:

Staiti, Paul, "Character and Class," in Rebora, Carrie and Staiti, Paul, et. al. John Singleton Copley in America. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, 1995. pp. 53-78

Lessons:

Portraits as Keys to History: Nathaniel Hurd, portraiture, identity

Portraits as Keys to History: Life as a colonial silversmith

Portraits as Keys to History: Self-Portraits and fashioning your own identity