"Unexpectedly, John Singleton Copley illuminated Boston's colonial sky," writes one of the authors of this volume. The son of poor Irish immigrants, Copley (1738-1815) became the supreme portraitist of the colonial era before he left his native Boston for England in 1774. Primarily in Boston, and to some extent in New York, Copley depicted contemporary merchant princes, clergymen, and military officers and their wives, as well as Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other political leaders. His splendidly painted portraits provided his sitters, Loyalists and revolutionaries alike, with the opulent images they craved and brought him spectacular material success.This book, which accompanies an important exhibition of Copley's work organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is the first major study of the artist published since 1966. Like the exhibition, it focuses on the large-scale paintings, miniatures, and pastels Copley executed before he moved to London, on the theory that his American oeuvre is unified by the circumstances of its production and is stylistically and intellectually distinct from his English pictures.

John Singleton Copley in America

Arts & Photography

Barratt, Carrie Rebora

Staiti, Paul

Rebora, Carrie

History & Criticism

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The most successful and resourceful portraitist of America’s early national period, Gilbert Stuart (17551828) possessed enormous natural talent, bringing his witty and irascible manner to bear on each of his works. This handsome book highlights Stuart’s achievements by presenting more than ninety portraits of exceptional quality, ranging from the early works he produced in Newport, Rhode Island, to those he executed just before his death in Boston.
Carrie Rebora Barratt and Ellen G. Miles show how Stuart developed and maintained a distinctive portrait style, tailoring his portrayals to fit his subjects. They trace the development of his art from his hometown of Newport, where he proved his talent, to his years in London and Dublin, where he mastered the techniques of the English late-eighteenth-century Grand Manner, to his return to America (no longer the Colonies but now the United States), where he dealt with clients in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston. The authors provide a short essay about Stuart in each of the sites of his production, which introduces the works painted there. There is also a special section devoted to Stuart’s famous and popular portraits of Washington, the so-called Vaughan, Athenaeum, and Lansdowne portraits. These works are discussed in terms of patronage, technique, chronology, and interpretation.
The most comprehensive book on the artist’s work to date, Gilbert Stuart is essential for anyone who admires American art and history.

Gilbert Stuart (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)

Miles, Ellen G.

Individual Artists

This volume catalogues the world’s most comprehensive collection of American portrait miniatures, ranging in date from the early 18th to the 20th century and representing 155 artists. Jewel-like and intimate, the pieces portray spouses, children, and other loved ones and were usually created for personal use. The Museum’s collection is also significant for its self-portraits by artists and for portraits of notable public figures. Each of the nearly six hundred works is illustrated and described in detail, and a biography and bibliography are provided for each artist. Two essays chart the history of the collection and the stylistic development of casework and lockets.

American Portrait Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Zabar, Lori

Emanuel Leutze's life-size Washington Crossing the Delaware commemorates the critical moment in the American Revolution when George Washington led a surprise attack against troops supporting the British forces in Trenton. When Leutze created the painting in 1850, after he had returned from America to his native Germany, he was hoping to rally support for the revolutionary movements then sweeping Europe. He sent the work to New York in 1851, and within four months 50,000 people had paid to see it. Today the painting is an icon of American visual culture and one of the most beloved objects in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
In 2007, Leutze's masterpiece became the focus of the most ambitious conservation and reframing project in the museum's history. This book is a behind-the-scenes report on that project, prefaced by an account of the history of the painting's acquisition and display at the museum.

Washington Crossing the Delaware: Restoring an American Masterpiece, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Fall, 2011)

Wilner, Eli

Mayer, Lance

Myers, Gay

Smeaton, Suzanne

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

In 1837, Thomas Sully, who had created a vogue for full-length portraiture among the elite of Philadelphia, was offered a commission to paint the young Queen Victoria. He had already painted Andrew Jackson and Lafayette, but it was his refined and sensual portraits of women that had won him the greatest renown. Queen Victoria and Thomas Sully tells the story of his complex and challenging sojourn abroad, in which he spent five months waiting for a sitting with Her Majesty. He kept expectations in check as he navigated his way through the corridors of British protocol and power, biding time by becoming an active participant in London's lively art scene. By drawing upon Victoria's and Sully's journals, as well as contemporary letters, Carrie Barratt deftly arrives at exactly how Sully achieved his stunning portrait of Victoria, which took great liberties with conventions of state portraiture and was acclaimed as a masterpiece.
 This volume, which accompanies an exhibition originating at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and traveling to The Wallace Collection in London, is beautifully illustrated and illuminates not only the creation of this painting but the competitive process of making portraits in order to advance political power. Barratt includes an edited version of Sully's engrossing journal, the diary of a highly articulate and entrepreneurial American in London with his twenty-one-year-old daughter during the exciting coronation year. Both the exhibition and the book have been undertaken at this time to commemorate the anniversary of Queen Victoria's death in January 1901--an even sure to garner considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic.
 Queen Victoria and Thomas Sully provides entrance to the creative process of an artist who thought of the world in terms of painting and recorded observations of the "essentials of the pictures" of Correggio, Titian, Reynolds, Rembrandt, and Rubens. His chronicle of early Victorian England is replete with colorful adventures: his visits to aristocratic soirees; his identification of the man who took the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon; his sightings of unemployed weavers singing for their supper and washerwomen beating clothes by the edge of the river.
 A work of scholarship valuable to art historians and students of Victoriana, this book also has the novelistic charm inherent in telling the true story of someone who really has "been to London to visit the Queen."
 Exhibition Schedule:
 http://www.metmuseum.org The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
September 19-December 31, 2000
 http://www.the-wallace-collection.org.uk The Wallace Collection, London
January 22-April 29, 2001

Queen Victoria and Thomas Sully

Princeton University Press

Published in conjunction with a 2005 retrospective exhibition of Stuart's work (the first since 1967), organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (where author Carrie Rebora Barratt is a curator) and the National Portrait Gallery (where Ellen G. Miles is a curator), this volume presents new scholarship on the preeminent portraitist of America's early national period. The text explores Stuart's training and working methods, as well as his relationships with patrons and the importance of the character of his subjects to the development of his style and interpretive choices. Of the 286 illustrations, 110 are in color. The volume is oversize: 9.5x12.5". Distributed by Yale U. Press under ISBN 0-300-10495-2. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Gilbert Stuart

Stuart, Gilbert

Miles, Ellen Gross

The most successful and resourceful portraitist of America's early national period, Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) possessed enormous natural talent, which he devoted to the representation of human likeness and character, bringing his witty and irascible manner to bear on each of his works, including his incisive portraits of George Washington. This publication accompanies a retrospective exhibition of Stuart's work, the first since 1967, and takes the standpoint that investigation of Stuart's sitters reveals the artist's practice of portraiture. His clients were facilitators of his progress, and knowledge of them is crucial to interpreting the artist's unique talents. The organization of this study follows Stuart through the eight cities in which he worked: Newport and Scotland (1755-75), London (1775-87), Dublin (1787-93), New York (1793-94), Philadelphia (1794-1803), Washington (1803-5), and Boston (1805-28). A short essay about the artist's experience in each city precedes catalogue entries on more than ninety portraits, all illustrated in color. A special section is devoted to Stuart's celebrated portraits of George Washington.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barratt, Carrie Rebora. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Barratt, Carrie Rebora

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barratt, Carrie Rebora. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

John Singleton Copley in America

Gilbert Stuart (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series)

American Portrait Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Washington Crossing the Delaware: Restoring an American Masterpiece, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Fall, 2011)

Queen Victoria and Thomas Sully

Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Stuart