A group of three adults and four children are gathered on and around a couch in an interior space that opens out to a distant hilly landscape in this horizontal portrait painting. All seven people have pale skin and are clustered across the middle of the composition. To our left, an older man wearing a white wig, white cravat, and black jacket sits facing us as he holds a squirming baby on his lap. The man’s slightly tanned face is turned to gaze to our right with pale blue eyes under thick brown eyebrows. Jowls line his jaw around pursed lips. The child in his lap twists to look up at him.…
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The Copley Family

painter John Singleton Copley (American, 1738 - 1815)

1776/1777

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 184.1 x 229.2 cm (72 1/2 x 90 1/4 in.) ; framed: 226.1 x 271.8 x 13.9 cm (89 x 107 x 5 1/2 in.)
Culture
American
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CAB
Credit line
Andrew W. Mellon Fund
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art