PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, PENNSYLVANIA
John Singleton Copley
MRS. ELIZABETH COFFIN AMORY
Details & Cataloguing
Important Americana
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New York
New York
John Singleton Copley
1738 - 1815
MRS. ELIZABETH COFFIN AMORY
titled Mrs. Elizabeth Coffin Amory/wife of/Thomas Amory Esq. and dated 1775 on an original label affixed to the stretcher
oil on canvas
30 1/4 by 25 in.; (76.8 by 63.5 cm)
Read Condition Report
Read Condition Report
oil on canvas
30 1/4 by 25 in.; (76.8 by 63.5 cm)
Provenance
Edward Dexter Sohier, Longwood, Massachusetts, 1873 (the sitter's son-in-law);
Dr. Julia T. and Miss Sarah I. Metcalf, Los Angeles, California, (his granddaughters, by descent);
Louisa Metcalf, Winthrop, Massachusetts, by 1966 (their niece, by descent);
Estate of the above (sold: Sotheby's, New York, American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, November 30, 2000, sale 7656, lot 119);
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale.
Dr. Julia T. and Miss Sarah I. Metcalf, Los Angeles, California, (his granddaughters, by descent);
Louisa Metcalf, Winthrop, Massachusetts, by 1966 (their niece, by descent);
Estate of the above (sold: Sotheby's, New York, American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, November 30, 2000, sale 7656, lot 119);
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale.
Literature
Augustus T. Perkins, Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley, (Boston, Massachusetts: Privately printed, 1873), p. 31;
Gertrude E. Meredith, The Descendants of Hugh Amory, (London: Cheswick Press, 1901), p. 347;
Barbara Neville Parker and Anne Bolling Wheeler, John Singleton Copley: American Portraits, (Boston, Massachusetts: Museum of Fine Arts, 1938), p. 25, pl. 124;
Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley: In America 1738-1774, vol. I, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 207, pl. 305 (as Mrs. Thomas Amory II);
Carrie Rebora Barratt and Paul Staiti, John Singleton Copley in America, (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams, 1995), pp. 278, 280.
Gertrude E. Meredith, The Descendants of Hugh Amory, (London: Cheswick Press, 1901), p. 347;
Barbara Neville Parker and Anne Bolling Wheeler, John Singleton Copley: American Portraits, (Boston, Massachusetts: Museum of Fine Arts, 1938), p. 25, pl. 124;
Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley: In America 1738-1774, vol. I, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 207, pl. 305 (as Mrs. Thomas Amory II);
Carrie Rebora Barratt and Paul Staiti, John Singleton Copley in America, (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams, 1995), pp. 278, 280.
Catalogue Note
Born in Boston, Mrs. Elizabeth Coffin Amory (1743-1823) was the daughter of William Coffin, a successful distiller, and Anne Holmes. She married Thomas Amory II (1722-1784) in 1764 and resided in the Governor Belcher House at Washington and Harvard Streets in Boston. Her husband was the eldest son of Thomas and Rebecca (Holmes) Amory. His father was a prominent merchant and rum distiller who died when Thomas II was six years old. He later studied Divinity at Harvard before taking over his family’s distilling business alongside his two younger brothers. Though notably unpretentious, he enjoyed hosting lavish social gatherings and was close friends with the unusually wealthy and stylish merchant Nicholas Boylston, who Copley painted three times. The marriage between Elizabeth and Thomas II represented a significant merger between two rival distilling families.
Thomas II’s younger brother, John, was the first member of the family to commission a portrait from Copley. In 1763, his wife Katherine Greene sat for a portrait that is now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Five years later, John commissioned his own portrait (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and in about 1770 he ordered a posthumous pastel of his father. According to Carrie Rebora Barratt and Paul Staiti, John asked Thomas II to pay a portion of the fee for their father’s portrait and it likely through this arrangement that the older brother was introduced to the artist. In the following years, Thomas II commissioned a half-length portrait of himself and the present bust-length portrait of his wife. Both pictures wonderfully captured the refined elegance and unassuming modesty that characterized the couple and their lives together.
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