# Mrs. Daniel Hubbard (Mary Greene)

- By: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)
- Date: c. 1764
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 127.6 × 100.9 cm (50 1/4 × 39 3/4 in.)
- Culture: England
- Credit line: Art Institute of Chicago Purchase Fund
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/59787)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/92777387-4f55-e3fa-10ba-a549810aca95/full/!1783,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

John Singleton Copley was largely self-taught, his only formal training from his stepfather Peter Pelham, an English artist who specialized in mezzotint engraving. He nonetheless garnered considerable success as a portrait painter before the Revolutionary War. The sitter here, Mary Greene Hubbard, was a member of Boston’s merchant class (Copley’s portrait of her husband, Daniel Hubbard \[1947.27\], is also in the Art Institute collection). Her pose, gown, and background were precisely copied from a British engraving of a noblewoman, yet Copley distinguished the work as his own by capturing the figure’s individual features as well as the surfaces and colors of the luxurious fabrics. A decade later, he left colonial Massachusetts for England to further his career and simultaneously escape the strong political divides among family, friends, and patrons amid the impending Revolution.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0