The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (114 page)

 
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(active 1683–1707).
Dutch still-life painter, active around Middelburgh. Nothing is known of his life, and his work was completely forgotten for more than two centuries after his death. Only a handful of paintings by him survive, but they show him to have been one of the most individual still-life painters of his time. They are the complete opposite of the lavish pieces by such celebrated contemporaries as Jan van
Huysum
and Rachel
Ruysch
, for they are small in scale and depict a few humble objects, characteristically placed on a bare ledge. The intensity of his scrutiny is such, however, that they take on something of the mystical quality of the still lifes of
Sánchez Cotán
or
Zurbarán
, and the hovering butterfly that Coorte sometimes incorporates in his work may have allegorical significance. One of his favourite subjects was a bundle of asparagus (examples in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, and the Ashmolean, Oxford).

 
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(1738–1815).
The greatest American painter of the 18th cent. He was the stepson of the engraver Peter Pelham (
c.
1695–1751), from whose large collection of engravings he gained a considerable knowledge of European art, but he was virtually self-taught as a painter. While still in his teens he had set up as a painter in his native Boston and by his early twenties he was painting portraits that, in their sense of life and character, completely outstripped anything previously produced by Colonial portraitists (
Colonel Epes Sargent
, NG, Washington,
c.
1760). Though he became extremely successful, Copley was diffident and self-doubtful by nature and came to see himself as an artist afflicted with provincialism, cut off from the great European tradition of painting. For a long while he hesitated to leave the security of Boston (where he earned ‘as much as if I were a
Raphael
or a
Correggio
’), even after his portrait of his half-brother Henry Pelham (
The Boy with a Squirrel
, Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston, 1765) had been highly praised by both
Reynolds
and
West
when it was exhibited in London in 1766. He finally left in 1774, when revolutionary activity was beginning to threaten his practice, and settled in London in 1775 after a study trip to Italy.
In England his style changed markedly, sacrificing the forthright vigour of his Colonial work for a more fashionable and ornate manner. He continued to paint fine portraits that were more than a match for the work of most of his contemporaries, but it is generally agreed that those he painted in America have much greater originality and conviction. In compensation for this decline as a portraitist, he was able to turn his hand to history painting, in which he had long been eager to make a success but for which the opportunities in America were severely limited. The first was
Brook Watson and the Shark
(NG, Washington, 1778; a copy Copley made for himself is in the Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston, and a smaller variant, 1782, is in the Detroit Institute of Arts). In this he followed the innovation of his countryman West in using modern dress, and went beyond him in depicting a subject not because it was of historical importance or moral significance, but merely because it was exciting. It was not until a generation later that the French
Romantics
took up this revolutionary idea. His other history paintings took more conventional themes, mainly patriotic and military, such as
The Death of Major Peirson
(Tate, London, 1783). In such works Copley revealed a magnificent gift for depicting heroic action in multi-figure compositions that none of his British contemporaries could approach, and these paintings won him considerable acclaim. They also brought on him the wrath of the
Royal Academy
(of which Copley had become a full member in 1779) when they were shown privately with great success, for this constituted a rival attraction to the Academy's own exhibitions. Copley's success in England, however, was fairly short-lived and his work gradually went out of favour. His final years were marked by a sad decline.
Morse
visited him in 1811 and wrote: ‘His powers of mind have almost entirely left him; his late paintings are miserable; it is really a lamentable thing that a man should outlive his faculties.’ He died leaving debts that had to be paid off by his son and namesake, who became Baron Lyndhurst and was three times Lord Chancellor.

 
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(b.
c.
1225).
Italian painter, one of the earliest about whom there is a body of documented knowledge. He served in the army of Florence and settled in Siena after his capture at the Battle of Montaperti (1260). In 1261 he painted the signed and dated
Madonna and Child Enthroned
(called the Madonna del Bordone)
for the Servite church at Siena, and in 1274 he and his son
Salerno
painted a Crucifix for Pistoia Cathedral; both paintings still remain in their original locations. On the basis of these documented works two other outstanding paintings are attributed to Coppo: a
Madonna and Child Enthroned
in Sta Maria dei Servi in Orvieto, and a Crucifix in the Pinacoteca at San Gimignano. He introduced new solidity and humanity to the
Byzantine
tradition, in the way, for example, that he represents the Virgin with her head inclined towards the Child, and with
Guido da Siena
he ranks as the founder of the Sienese School.

 
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(1618 or less likely 1614–84).
Flemish
genre
and portrait painter, known as the ‘little van
Dyck
’, although his style is much closer to
Terborch
. He was born in Antwerp and was mainly active there, but he also travelled to Holland and England. His best works, charming and daintily executed, are smallscale fashionable group portraits such as
A Family Group
(NG, London).