Copley Society of Art

Last updated
Copley Society of Art
CoSo exterior B&W.jpg
Copley Society of Art
Established1879
Location158 Newbury Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Website www.copleysociety.org

The Copley Society of Art is America's oldest non-profit art association. It was founded in 1879 [1] by the first graduating class of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and continues to play an important role in promoting its member artists and the visual arts in Boston. The Society is named after the renowned John Singleton Copley. The gallery currently represents over 400 living artist members, ranging in experience from students to nationally recognized artists and in style from traditional and academic realists to contemporary and abstract painters, photographers, sculptors, and printmakers. Several of the artists working in the tradition of the Boston School of painters exhibit at the Copley Society of Art, along with the Guild Of Boston Artists a few doors down from the Copley Society of Art's Newbury Street location.

Contents

John Singleton Copley, Self-portrait, 1780-1784, Oil on canvas Self portrait of John Singleton Copley.jpg
John Singleton Copley, Self-portrait, 1780–1784, Oil on canvas

The gallery hosts between 15 and 20 exhibitions each year, including solo exhibitions, thematic group shows, juried competitions, and fundraising events.

The most well known of these events is the annual "Fresh Paint" auction. Several artist members are chosen by the gallery to spend one day together painting outside in the city. The paintings are brought back to the gallery while still wet, placed directly into frames and mounted on the walls for sale through silent auction. The final night of the week-long event, A few selected pieces are included in a live auction. Although usual commission split for the gallery is 60 percent to the artist and 40 percent to the Copley Society, for this event the artists are required to donate 50 percent of the sale, and encouraged to donate up to 100 percent of the selling price to the non-profit organization.

The Copley Society has helped establish the careers of many of Boston's prominent full-time professional fine artists.

Notable artists

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victorian Artists Society</span> Artists collective in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

The Victorian Artists Society, which can trace its establishment to 1856 in Melbourne, promotes artistic education, art classes and gallery hire exhibition in Australia. It was formed in March 1888 when the Victorian Academy of Arts and the Australian Artists' Association amalgamated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual art of the United States</span>

Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization, there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place. Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White the earliest example. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting. Furniture-makers imitating English styles and similar craftsmen were also established in the major cities, but in the English colonies, locally made pottery remained resolutely utilitarian until the 19th century, with fancy products imported.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Singleton Copley</span> Anglo-American painter (1738–1815)

John Singleton Copley was an Anglo-American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was probably born in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Anglo-Irish. After becoming well-established as a portrait painter of the wealthy in colonial New England, he moved to London in 1774, never returning to America. In London, he met considerable success as a portraitist for the next two decades, and also painted a number of large history paintings, which were innovative in their readiness to depict modern subjects and modern dress. His later years were less successful, and he died heavily in debt. He was father of John Copley, 1st Baron Lyndhurst.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts</span> Art school of Tufts University

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University is the art school of Tufts University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It offers undergraduate and graduate degrees dedicated to the visual arts.

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a private college specializing in the visual arts and located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. MCAD currently enrolls approximately 800 students. MCAD is one of just a few major art schools to offer a major in comic art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Fine Arts, Boston</span> Art museum in Massachusetts, United States of America

The Museum of Fine Arts is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas. With more than 1.2 million visitors a year, it is the 79th–most visited art museum in the world as of 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Johnson Heade</span> American painter (1819–1904)

Martin Johnson Heade was an American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, and depictions of tropical birds, as well as lotus blossoms and other still lifes. His painting style and subject matter, while derived from the romanticism of the time, are regarded by art historians as a significant departure from those of his peers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Weston Benson</span> American painter

Frank Weston Benson, frequently referred to as Frank W. Benson, was an American artist from Salem, Massachusetts known for his Realistic portraits, American Impressionist paintings, watercolors and etchings. He began his career painting portraits of distinguished families and murals for the Library of Congress. Some of his best known paintings depict his daughters outdoors at Benson's summer home, Wooster Farm, on the island of North Haven, Maine. He also produced numerous oil, wash and watercolor paintings and etchings of wildfowl and landscapes.

<i>Watson and the Shark</i> Paintings by John Singleton Copley

Watson and the Shark is an oil painting by the Anglo-American painter John Singleton Copley, depicting the rescue of the English boy Brook Watson from a shark attack in Havana, Cuba. Copley, then living in London, painted three versions, which are all now in the United States. The 1778 version is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. A second, full-size 1778 replica is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a third, smaller, 1782 version with a more vertical composition is in the Detroit Institute of Arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Koch</span> American painter

John Koch, was an American painter and teacher, and an important figure in 20th century Realism. He is best known for his light-filled paintings of urban interiors, often featuring classical allusions, many set in his own Manhattan apartment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boston School (painting)</span> American group of artists

The Boston School was a group of Boston-based painters active in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Often classified as American Impressionists, they had their own regional style, combining the painterliness of Impressionism with a more conservative approach to figure painting and a marked respect for the traditions of Western art history. Their preferred subject matter was genteel: portraits, picturesque landscapes, and young women posing in well-appointed interiors. Major influences included John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, and Jan Vermeer. Key figures in the Boston School were Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank Weston Benson, and William McGregor Paxton, all of whom trained in Paris at the Académie Julian and later taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Their influence can still be seen in the work of some contemporary Boston-area artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kahlil Gibran (sculptor)</span> Lebanese American painter and sculptor

Kahlil G. Gibran, sometimes known as "Kahlil George Gibran", was a Lebanese American painter and sculptor from Boston, Massachusetts. A student of the painter Karl Zerbe at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gibran first received acclaim as a magic realist painter in the late 1940s when he exhibited with other emerging artists later known as the "Boston Expressionists". Called a "master of materials", as both artist and restorer, Gibran turned to sculpture in the mid-fifties. In 1972, in an effort to separate his identity from his famous relative and namesake, the author of The Prophet, Gibran Kahlil Gibran, who was cousin both to his father Nicholas Gibran and his mother Rose Gibran, the sculptor co-authored with his wife Jean a biography of the poet entitled Kahlil Gibran His Life And World. Gibran is known for multiple skills, including painting; wood, wax, and stone carving; welding; and instrument making.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grand Central Art Galleries</span> Art gallery in New York, United States

The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Edmund Greacen, and others. Artists closely associated with the Grand Central Art Galleries included Hovsep Pushman, George de Forest Brush, and especially Sargent, whose posthumous show took place there in 1928.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harding's Gallery (Boston)</span>

Harding's Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, exhibited works by European and American artists in the 1830s-1840s. The building on School Street also housed a newspaper press; the Mercantile Library Association; the Boston Artists' Association; and artists' studios. The building's name derived from painter Chester Harding, who kept his studio there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Wentworth Roberts</span> American painter

Elizabeth Wentworth Roberts was an American painter who lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Paris, and Concord, Massachusetts. She established the Jennie Sesnan Gold Medal at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she had studied and won the Mary Smith Prize. She also studied in Paris at Académie Julian and Florence. In Massachusetts, Roberts founded and funded the Concord Art Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Burtis Baker</span> American painter

Samuel Burtis Baker, commonly known as Burt Baker, was an American artist and teacher, best known for his portrait paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary E. Wrinch</span> Canadian painter (1877-1969)

Mary Evelyn Wrinch (1877–1969), was a Canadian artist who created miniature paintings, oil paintings, and block prints, sometimes inspired by the Northern Ontario landscape. She pioneered the 'Canadian style', painting landscapes with bold colours of the Algoma, Muskoka and Lake Superior regions, in situ. In her miniature paintings on ivory, she depicted her sitters with freshness and vitality. Her colour block prints are virtuoso examples of the medium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noma Copley</span> American art collector and jewelry designer

Noma Copley was an American fine arts jeweler and art collector noted for her contributions to Surrealist practices and activities. From 1953 through 1968, she was married to William Copley and, with him, helped to acquire one of the largest collections of Surrealist paintings and sculpture in America. In 1954, they established the William and Noma Copley Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering the creative arts. According to a 1975 article in New York Magazine, she "emerged from the Paris world of surrealist painters five years ago to become one of New York's most original jewelry designers."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art gallery</span> Place where art is exhibited and sometimes also sold

An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long gallery in Elizabethan and Jacobean houses served many purposes including the display of art. Historically, art is displayed as evidence of status and wealth, and for religious art as objects of ritual or the depiction of narratives. The first galleries were in the palaces of the aristocracy, or in churches. As art collections grew, buildings became dedicated to art, becoming the first art museums.

<i>A Boy with a Flying Squirrel</i> Painting by John Singleton Copley

A Boy with a Flying Squirrel (Henry Pelham), or Henry Pelham (Boy with a Squirrel), is a 1765 painting by the American-born painter John Singleton Copley. It depicts Copley's teenaged half-brother Henry Pelham with a pet flying squirrel, a creature commonly found in colonial American portraits as a symbol of the sitter's refinement. Painted while Copley was a Boston-based portraitist aspiring to be recognized by his European contemporaries, the work was brought to London for a 1766 exhibition. There, it was met with overall praise from artists like Joshua Reynolds, who nonetheless criticized Copley's minuteness. Later historians and critics assessed the painting as a pivotal work in both Copley's career and the history of American art. The work was featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Gallery of Art. As of 2023, it is held by the former.

References

  1. Oliver, Jean N. (Sep 1904). "The Copley Society of Boston". The New England Magazine. XXXI: 605–617.

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Copley Society of Art at Wikimedia Commons