The Red Cross Knight

1793

John Singleton Copley

Painter, American, 1738 - 1815

A knight in armor strides toward two women wearing long gowns in a balustraded terrace in this horizontal painting. The three people all have smooth, pale skin with flushed cheeks. To our left, the man’s entire body is covered in armor except for his face under a raised visor. He has blue eyes, and his rose-red lips are slightly parted. His helmet is topped with a plume of white feathers. There is a red cross on his chest and red fabric wraps over his far shoulder and billows down his back to his shins. He holds a round shield edged in red up over his head with his far arm, and holds a lance down by his side with the hand closer to us. A sword hangs from his far hip, and he strides forward onto his other leg. He gazes to our right. In the right half of the composition, the two women stand facing each other. Both have long, curly gray hair, delicate noses, gray eyes under arched brows, and their coral-pink lips are parted. At the center of the painting, one woman, Fidelia, wears a long-sleeved, floor-length white gown tied at the waist with a butter-yellow sash. White cloth wraps around her head and through her hair, and it flutters behind her. She turns her head to look up and to our left, and her head is surrounded by a vibrant, yellow glow. In her right hand, closer to us, she holds up a gold chalice with a snake curling from the cup, its mouth open and tongue flicking out near her hair. She holds a brown book in her other hand, down in front of her hips. The second woman, Speranza, faces Fidelia but she looks up and to our left. Speranza’s topaz-blue, satin dress has a gauzy white collar and cuffs, and the skirt pools around her feet. A sky-blue ribbon wraps through Speranza’s hair. With her far hand, Speranza touches Fidelia’s wrist near the book. With her other hand, closer to us, Fidelia gathers her dress and braces the curving prongs of a silver anchor across that arm. The trio is framed by tall trees on the left and columns swathed with burgundy-red curtains on the right. A balustrade between the man in armor and woman in white is silhouetted against a salmon-pink sky along the horizon. A screen of white clouds float against the aquamarine-blue sky above.

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Information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century, pages 76-81, which is available as a free PDF https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/american-paintings-18th-century.pdf
On View

NGA, West Building, M-127, E

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Mrs. Gordon Dexter

  • Dimensions

    overall: 213.5 x 273 cm (84 1/16 x 107 1/2 in.)
    framed: 345.4 x 285.4 x 11.4 cm (136 x 112 3/8 x 4 1/2 in.)

  • Accession

    1942.4.2

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist; his son, John Singleton Copley, Jr., Lord Lyndhurst [1772-1863], London; (his sale, Christie, Manson and Woods, London, 5 March 1864, no. 86); bought by "Clarke" for Martha Babcock Greene Amory [Mrs. Charles Amory, 1812-1880], the artist's granddaughter, and her husband, Charles Amory [1808-1898], Boston;[1] purchased 1872 by their daughter, Susan Greene Amory Dexter [1840-1924] and son-in-law, Franklin Gordon Dexter [1824-1903], Boston;[2] their son, Gordon Dexter [1864-1937], Boston;[3] his widow, Isabella Hunnewell Dexter [c.1871-1968];[4] gift 1942 to NGA.
[1] "Clarke" is listed as the purchaser in the annotated copy of Christie's Catalogue of the Very Valuable Collection of Pictures of the Rt. Hon. Lord Lyndhurst, deceased owned by the Boston Atheneum, and by Algernon Graves, Art Sales From Early in the Eighteenth Century to Early in the Twentieth Century, 3 vols. (London, 1908-1921), 1:149; see also Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966), 2:400, 403. News of the sale appeared in the (Boston) Daily Advertiser 19 March 1864. The initials "CA" in the Atheneum catalogue, noted next to the lot number, indicate that it was purchased for Charles Amory. For the Amorys' dates see John William Linzee, The Linzee Family of Great Britain and the United States of America, 2 vols. (Boston, 1917), 2:766.
[2] Martha Babcock Amory, The Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley, R.A., (Boston, 1882), 104; Frank W. Bayley, A Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley, (Boston, 1910), 85. Charles Amory wrote Franklin Gordon Dexter on 31 January 1872, "As regard the Red X Knight, we originally bought it to keep, but on buying the Family Picture, thought it putting too much money, for our means, into two pictures and determined to dispose of the first ... to confess the truth to you we neither of us like the idea of selling to our children" (copy in NGA curatorial files). Dexter's 1894 "Memorandum about some of my pictures in 55 Beacon St." states: "The Red Cross Knight by Copley was bought in England by Mr. Charles Amory who sold it to me. The figures are those of Copley's children. The Knight became in later life Lord High Chancellor Lyndhurst - the woman in white became the wife of Gardiner Greene and consequently the mother of Gordon's grandmother Amory - and the one in blue lived and died Miss Copley. Both were long lived. I have seen both since Gordon was born. Miss Copley I saw in London. I bought the picture when I moved to 55 Beacon St. Mr. Charles Amory's note to me gives some more particulars." For Dexter's dates see Orrando Perry Dexter, Dexter Genealogy, 1642-1904, (New York, 1904), 197; Mrs. Dexter's birthdate is in Linzee 1917, 2:781-782; her death date is in "Proceeding of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society," (meeting of 1 April 1925), The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 74 (July 1925), 325.
[3] Frank W. Bayley, The Life and Works of John Singleton Copley, (Boston, 1915), 206; Theodore Bolton and Harry Lorin Binsse, "John Singleton Copley," The Antiquarian 15 (December 1930), 116; Dexter is listed in Who Was Who in America, vol.1, 1897-1942 (Chicago, 1966), 320.
[4] Edgar P. Richardson, "The Recent Acquisitions: The Red Cross Knight by Copley," ArtQ 5, no. 3 (Summer 1942), 267-268. Mrs. Dexter died in New York City at the age of 97 (obituary, The New York Times, 16 December 1968, 47).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1793

  • Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1793, no. 75.

1871

  • Boston Atheneum, 1871-1873.

1965

  • John Singleton Copley, 1738-1815, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1965-1966, no. 90.

1995

  • John Singleton Copley in England, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1995-1996, no. 38, repro.

Bibliography

1793

  • "The Royal Academy." True Briton (29 April 1793): 2.

  • "Royal Academy." London Chronicle (27-30 April 1793): 412.

  • "Royal Academy." Public Advertiser (30 April 1793): 2.

  • "Royal Academy." True Briton (1 May 1793): 3.

  • "Exhibition of Pictures", Times (London), 30 April, 1793: 4.

  • "Royal Academy. A Review of the Exhibition, 1793. No. II", London Recorder, or Sunday Gazette, 5 May, 1793: 4..

  • "Royal Academy. Names of the Persons whom the Portraits represent." Public Advertiser (2 May 1793): 4.

  • "The Twenty-Fifth Exhibition of the Royal Academy", The Morning Herald, 30 April 1793: 2.

1867

  • Tuckerman, Henry T. Book of the Artists. New York, 1867: 79.

1873

  • Perkins, Augustus Thorndike. A Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley. Boston, 1873: 83, 98-99, 133.

1882

  • Amory, Martha Babcock. The Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley, R.A.. Boston, 1882: 75, 104, 453-455.

1910

  • Bayley, Frank W. A Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley. Boston, 1910: 85.

1915

  • Bayley, Frank W. The Life and Works of John Singleton Copley. Boston, 1915: 32, 35-36, 170, 205-206.

1930

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

1940

  • Swan, Mable Munson. The Atnenaeum Gallery 1827-1873. Boston, 1940: 108-109.

1942

  • Richardson, Edgar P., "The Recent Acquisitions: The Red Cross Knight by Copley," ArtQ 5, no. 3 (Summer 1942): 267-268.

1956

  • Richardson, Edgar P. Painting in America: The Story of 450 Years. New York, 1956: 143.

1959

  • Bouton, Margaret. American Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1959 (Booklet Number One in Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.): 14, color repro.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 320, repro.

1965

  • John Singleton Copley, 1738-1815, Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1965-1966: no. 90.

1966

  • Prown, Jules David. John Singleton Copley, vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966, pp. 342, 388, 403, 445.

1970

  • American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 46, repro.

1975

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 394, fig. 569, color repro.

1980

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: 9

  • Bradley, Laurel. "Eighteenth-Century Paintings and Illustrations of Spenser's Faerie Queene: A Study in Taste." Marsyas 20 (1980): 42.

  • Perkins, Robert F. and William J. Gavin III. The Boston Athenaeum Art Exhibition Index, 1827-1874. Boston, 1980: 41, 288-289.

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 137, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 31, repro. 28-29.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 390, no. 554, color repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 151, repro.

1995

  • John Singleton Copley in England. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1995-1996: no. 38.

  • Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 76-81, repro. 79.

  • Kramer, Hilton. "Copley's Decline." Art & Antiques (December 1995): 92-93, repro.

2000

  • Kirsh, Andrea, and Rustin S. Levenson. Seeing Through Paintings: Physical Examination in Art Historical Studies. Materials and Meaning in the Fine Arts 1. New Haven, 2000: 155, 158, fig. 156, color fig. 157.

Wikidata ID

Q20180030

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