| Great portrait painters throughout history have used various techniques to
capture the appearance and personality of their subjects. Some, such as Anthony
Van Dyck
or John Singer Sargent, employed rich, bold colors freely brushed in expressive
strokes. Others opted for a more restrained approach, in which brushwork was
less obvious, line was more important in describing contours, and colors were
more muted. Copley’s somber yet grand portrait of Boston merchant Thomas
Amory II is of the latter type, and it beautifully demonstrates how much can
be conveyed through so little overt display of artifice. . . .
- Franklin Kelly, Curator of American and British Paintings
National Gallery of Art, Washington |
Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from
the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
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:: The Curator's Journals Project
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