Richard Heber

Download3122 × 4000 px View on a wall Edit

Artist: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 65 1/4 x 51 3/16 inches (165.7 x 130 cm)
Museum: Yale Center for British Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a family of Irish immigrants, John Singleton Copley was largely self-taught. In the 1760s, he sent pictures to London for exhibition with the Society of Artists. His work was praised by Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West, but they were also critical of his “hard line” and coloring. Despite unrivaled success as a portraitist in the colonies, Copley left for England in 1774 shortly before the American Revolution.

In London he maintained a successful practice for the next forty years. The clergyman Reginald Heber commissioned this portrait of his son Richard (1774–1833), aged eight, when Copley was at the height of his powers. In a loose and vigorous composition, Heber is cast as a cricketer leaning casually on his bat and looking fearlessly toward the bowler. Nothing in the portrait suggests the sitter’s studious future, as a classical scholar and one of the leading book collectors of his generation.

Text: Yale Center for British Art.