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John Singleton Copley

Adam Babcock, c. 1774

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 117 x 91.7 cm (46 1/16 x 36 1/8 in.)

framed: 132.4 x 107 cm (52 1/8 x 42 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Henry A. and Caroline C. Murray

Accession Number

1978.79.1

Artists / Makers

John Singleton Copley (painter) American, 1738 - 1815

Image Use

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Provenance

Edwin A. Blake [1847-1928], the sitter's great-grandson;[1] sold 1916 to (Macbeth Galleries, New York);[2] purchased 1917 by Alice Greenwood Chapman, Milwaukee [1853-1935];[3] repurchased by (Macbeth Gallery, New York); sold 25 February 1919 to Arthur Meeker [1866-1946], Chicago.[4] Fannie Morris Babcock Murray [Mrs. Henry Alexander Murray, 1858-1940], New York; her son, Dr. Henry A. Murray, Cambridge, MA [1893-1988]; gift 1978 to NGA.

[1] Stephen Babcock, Babcock Genealogy, New York, 1903: 219; Wilkins Updike, A History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island, 2nd ed., Boston, 1907: 2: v; on Blake see the Journal of the Eightieth Session of the New York East Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1928: 665-667.

[2] Macbeth Gallery Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, correspondence with Arthur Meeker, 16 January 1919. See also "Copley Portraits Sold," The New York Times (30 December 1916).

[3] Macbeth Gallery Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, correspondence with Miss Chapman, 14 January to 19 June 1917. Miss Chapman made a first payment on the portrait and that of Mrs. Babcock [NGA 1985.20.1] in January 1917, but by June she had changed her mind about the purchase. She wrote on 7 June, "I am too overcome by the outcome of the war to be indulging in such luxuries...I have just given an ambulance to the Wisconsin Ambulance Co." On Miss Chapman, a Milwaukee art patron and collector, see the Milwaukee Journal for 27 April 1935 (obituary) and 12 May 1935.

[4] Meeker, vice-president of Armour & Co. and a collector of American art, is listed in Who Was Who in America 2 (1943-1950, fourth printing 1946), 23. His obituary is in The New York Times (6 February 1946): 23. Although he offered to sell the portraits back to Macbeth in June 1925, there is no record in the Macbeth Gallery papers that they were repurchased (Macbeth Gallery Papers, Archives of American Art, Correspondence).

[5] Babcock 1903, 520; obituary, The New York Times (3 June 1940): 15; Mrs. Murray was a descendant of the sitter's brother Henry Babcock. According to Barbara Neville Parker and Anne Bolling Wheeler, John Singleton Copley, American Portraits, Boston, 1938: 30, she acquired the portrait about 1930.

[6] On Murray see Ronald Turner, ed., Thinkers of the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed., Chicago and London, 1987: 560-561; obituary, The New York Times (24 June 1988), reprinted in The New York Times Biographical Service 19, no. 6 (June 1988): 746. Adrian Lamb painted a copy of this portrait in 1979 for the Murrays.

Associated Names

Blake, Edwin A.
Chapman, Alice Greenwood
Macbeth Galleries
Macbeth Galleries
Meeker, Arthur
Murray, Fannie Morris Babcock, Mrs.
Murray, Henry Alexander, Dr. and Mrs.

Exhibition History

1917: An Exhibition of Early American Paintings, Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1917, no. 8.

Bibliography

1903: Babcock, Stephen. Babcock Genealogy. New York, 1903: 67-68, repro. opp. 68.

1907: Updike, Wilkins. A History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island. 3 vols. 2nd ed. Boston, 1907: 2:v, repro. opp. 52.

1910: Bayley, Frank W. A Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley. Boston, 1910: 23.

1915: Bayley, Frank W. The Life and Works of John Singleton Copley. Boston, 1915: 48.

1917: An Exhibition of Early American Paintings, Exh. cat. Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, 1917: no. 8.

1930: Bolton, Theodore and Harry Lorin Binsse. "John Singleton Copley." The Antiquarian 15 (December 1930): 116.

1938: Parker, Barbara Neville and Anne Bolling Wheeler. John Singleton Copley: American Portraits in Oil, Pastel, and Miniature, with Biographical Sketches. Boston, 1938: 29-30, pl. 120.

1966: Prown, Jules David. John Singleton Copley, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966, pp. 92, 156-157, 208, fig. 333.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 134, repro.

1991: Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin. Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic. Exh. cat. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. New Haven, 1991: 10-11, 104, repro. 106.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 149, repro.

1995: Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 38-40, repro. 39.