Colonel William Fitch and His Sisters Sarah and Ann Fitch

1800/1801

John Singleton Copley

Painter, American, 1738 - 1815

Two women reach for or touch the arm of a man wearing a uniform and standing next to a chestnut-brown horse in front of a deep landscape in this horizontal painting. All three people have pale skin with oval faces, rosy cheeks, long, straight noses, cleft chins, and their mouths are closed. The horse and man fill most of the right half of the composition. The horse’s back is as high as the man’s shoulder, and it stands with its rear angled to our right and its front legs behind the man. It turns its head to look off to our right, its black mane and tail flaring like blazes. The man rests his arm straight across the saddle on the horse’s back. He looks off to our left almost in profile, and his wavy gray hair is wind tousled. His vivid red jacket has silver epaulets, two rows of silver buttons down the front, a high, yellow collar, and yellow cuffs. A black band is wrapped around his neck over a white cloth, the upper edge of which is visible tucked up under his chin. A white strap holding a sword crosses his chest, and a dark rose-pink sash is tied over his coat, around his waist. The tail of the coat falls to his knees, and he wears ivory-white, tightly fitting breeches over knee-high black boots with silver spurs. He wears a pale yellow glove on the hand to our right, which rests on the horse, and holds the second glove and a black hat with the other hand. That arm angles slightly from his body toward the women. Up on a step, the woman closer to the man stands with her body facing us though she looks off to our right. She wears a black dress with elbow-length sleeves and a frilly white collar. Her brown hair is pulled up and back, and curls frame her face. She rests her left arm, to our right, on the man’s upper arm and holds a closed pine-green parasol with her other hand down in front of her body. The other woman stands with her body facing our right in profile, but she turns her face slightly to also look off to our right. She wears a white gown, head wrap, and long white veil. Brown curls peek out from under the head covering. She touches the veil with her left hand, farther from us, and reaches toward the man’s hand with her other. An oversized urn sits on a hip-high wall to the left of the women, and trees grow up the left edge of the painting. The distant landscape has sage-green hills, dark green trees, and rocky mountains along the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. Clouds create a diagonal and across the blue sky above, which transition to peach along the horizon.

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.
Information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century, pages 81-87, 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, W

Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Dr. James Lloyd [1728-1810], Boston, or his son, James Lloyd [1769-1831], Boston;[1] John Borland [1792-1876], Boston, nephew of James Lloyd;[2] his sons, John Nelson Borland [1828-1890] and M. Woolsey Borland [1824-1909], who bought his brother's share;[3] his granddaughter, Katharine Tiffany Abbott [Mrs. Gordon Abbott, 1872-1948], Boston; her children, Katharine Abbott Batchelder [Mrs. George L. Batchelder, 1899-1977], Beverly, Massachusetts, Gordon Abbott [1904-1973], Manchester, Massachusetts, and Eleanor Abbott Lothrop [Mrs. Francis B. Lothrop, 1900-1992], Boston; gift 1960 to NGA.
[1] The artist's descendants believed that the portrait was painted for the Fitches' maternal uncle, Dr. James Lloyd, a prominent Boston surgeon [Martha Babcock Amory, The Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley, R.A. (Boston, 1882), 195; Frank W. Bayley, The Life and Works of John Singleton Copley (Boston, 1915), 104; and Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 2:419]. The donors also believed this (letter from Katharine Abbott Batchelder, 27 February 1974, in NGA curatorial files). Earlier owners, however, believed it was painted for Lloyd's son, who later served as United States Senator from Massachusetts. When M. Woolsey Borland placed the painting on loan at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1898, for example, he wrote that it was sent to my grand-uncle Senator James Lloyd in Boston." (Letter of 19 December 1898, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, archives) Dr. Lloyd is listed in the Dictionary of American Biography 6, 333; for his descendants see Papers of the Lloyd Family of the Manor of Queen's Village, Lloyd's Neck, Lond Island, New York, 1654-1826, edited by Dorothy C. Barck, 2 vols. (New York, 1927), 2:889, 895, 899.
[2] Katharine Abbott Batchelder, letter, 27 February 1974, in NGA curatorial files.
[3] Batchelder 1974, letter; M. Woolsey Borland's death date is found in the Social Register, Boston (New York, 1910), 165.
[4] The birth-dates of Mrs. Abbott and her daughters are found in Nelson Otis Tiffany, The Tiffanies of America; History and Genealogy (Buffalo, 1901?), 37; Mrs. Lothrop's death is listed in "Deaths 1993," an appendix to Social Register Association, Social Register 1993, New York, 1992, 21. Other dates were obtained in conversations with Gordon Abbott III in 1988.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1801

  • Royal Academy, London, 1801, no. 21, as Portraits of the late Col. Fitch and the Misses Fitches.

1829

  • Boston Atheneum, 1829, no. 47.

1898

  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1898-1907.

1944

  • Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, 1944-1960.

Bibliography

1801

  • "Exhibition of Paintings, &c. At the Royal Academy, Somerset-Place." St. James Chronicle, or British Evening Post (7-9 May 1801): 4.

  • "Royal Academy". The Morning Herald (27 April 1801): 3.

  • "Royal Acadmy, III". The Morning Herald (1 May 1801): 2.

  • "Royal Exhibition. Number VI." Oracle, and The Daily Advertiser (7 May 1801): 3.

1829

  • Boston Atheneum, Exh. cat. 1829: no. 47. [See Perkins and Gavin 1980, 39, as Col. W. Fitch, Taking Leave of His Sisters, Before Embarking With His Regiment for Actual Service, lent by J. Lloyd.

1867

  • Tuckerman, Henry T. Book of the Artists. New York and London, 1867: 72.

1873

  • Perkins, Augustus Thorndike. A Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley. Boston, 1873: 54.

1882

  • Amory, Martha Babcock. The Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley, R.A.. Boston, 1882: 193, 195-196, 202-203.

1905

  • Graves, Algernon. The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Work from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904. 8 vols. London, 1905-1906, 2:159.

1915

  • Bayley, Frank W. The Life and Works of John Singleton Copley. Boston, 1915: 104.

1966

  • Prown, Jules David. John Singleton Copley, vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966, pp. 362, 388, 419-420, no. 20.

1970

  • American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 44, repro., as Colonel Fitch and His Sisters.

1975

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 394, color repro. 395.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 136, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 31, repro. 34.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 390, no. 556, color repro., as Colonel Fitch and His Sisters.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 151, 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: 81-87, color repro. 83.

Wikidata ID

Q20180516

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