John Singleton Copley | Explore & Learn | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

John Singleton Copley, American, 1738–1815
Ebenezer Storer, ca. 1767–69
Pastel on paper mounted on canvas; 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm)
Gift of Thomas J. Watson, 1940 (40.161.1)

Commissions from the closely related Green and Storer families of Boston accounted in large measure for Copley's extremely prolific production of pastel portraits during the mid-1760s. He produced at least fifty-five pastel portraits before he left America. Both Copley and his affluent sitters would have been aware of the taste for pastels in Europe, and Copley, a notoriously slow painter, may have enjoyed the expedience and brilliance offered by the pastel crayons. Relatively few masters of this difficult medium have been able to match his virtuoso rendering of satin, lace, pearls, flowers, and background drapery.
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