Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/186

 equally confident that once begun it would not close until independence had been secured. He was at Parma engaged upon a copy of the St. Jerome of Correggio when he learned to his surprise and inexpressible relief that his wife had reached England (28 June 1775) safely with three of her children: Elizabeth, born in 1770; John Singleton, born 21 May 1772; and Mary, born in 1773. A son, born after Copley left Boston, and who died there soon afterwards, remained behind with Copley's mother, who was too feeble to bear the voyage, and with her son Henry Pelham. Knowing that his wife and children were well cared for on reaching England by her brother-in-law, Mr. Bromfield, Copley visited the galleries of Austria, Germany, and Holland before returning to London, which he reached in December 1776. He at once settled down to work, first in a house in Leicester Fields, from which he subsequently removed to 25 George Street, Hanover Square, where the rest of his life was spent, and which was occupied by his son until his death in 1863. Copley, who was made A.R.A. in 1776 and R.A. in 1779, now felt that he need not confine himself to portrait-painting, but might safely indulge a long-cherished ambition, and follow the example of West in painting pictures of historical or imaginative interest. The first of these, ‘A Youth rescued from a Shark,’ illustrative of an accident which occurred to Mr. (afterwards Sir) Brook Watson in the harbour of Havannah, was exhibited in 1779. It was presented by Copley to Christ's Hospital School, and in a fine mezzotint by Valentine Green became and is still familiar on many a wall in England. His reputation as a portrait-painter was enhanced by a fine picture which contained portraits of himself, his father-in-law, Mr. Clarke, who had been driven from America, his wife, and four children, a work which was greatly admired when last publicly seen in England, at the Great Exhibition of 1862, for its composition, drawing, force of expression, and fine colour. It hung on the walls of the house in George Street until the death of Lord Lyndhurst, when it was bought for a thousand guineas by Mr. Charles S. Amory of Boston, U.S., husband of a granddaughter of Copley's. It is said to have been materially injured in the hands of a cleaner to whom it was entrusted after the sale. Commissions for portraits at good prices were not wanting. While busy with these Copley had the happy thought of perpetuating on canvas the remarkable incident of Lord Chatham's last appearance in the House of Lords (7 April 1778). The picture is of high value because of the number of portraits, carefully studied from the life, which it contains. In it Copley has preserved the remarkable incident, not generally known, that while the whole house rose, every member of it showing interest and concern, the Earl of Mansfield, who bore Lord Chatham a determined animosity, sat still, as Lord Camden, who was present, writes in a letter to the Duke of Grafton (see, England, vi. 45, ed. 1853), ‘almost as much unmoved as the senseless body itself.’ The picture, now, together with the sketch for it (in which the Earl of Mansfield is standing), in the National Gallery, created great interest. Two thousand five hundred copies of it, engraved by Bartolozzi in his best style, were rapidly sold. Copies were sent to Boston and were hailed with pride by Copley's fellow-citizens. His mother, writing thence (6 Feb. 1788), tells him: ‘Your fame, my dear son, is sounded by all who are lovers of the art you bid fair to excel in.’ Fine as this work is, considering the difficulty of the subject, it yields in charm and artistic value to another picture of Copley's painted in 1783 for Alderman Boydell's gallery, which is now also in the National Gallery, of ‘The Death of Major Pierson’ in repelling the attack of the French at St. Helier, Jersey (6 Jan. 1781). The woman flying from the crowd in terror with a child in her arms was painted from a young American woman, the nurse of Copley's family; the figure between her and the wall is Mrs. Copley, who, as this and other pictures show, was as remarkable for her beauty as by all accounts she was for her worth; the boy in a green dress running by the nurse's side is young Copley, afterwards Lord Lyndhurst. This picture, for which the nation gave sixteen hundred guineas in 1864, had every justice done to it by Sharp, whose engraving from it is much prized by collectors. These works established Copley's reputation as an historical painter, and secured him a commission from the corporation of London for a very large picture painted in 1789–90, now in the Guildhall, of ‘The Repulse and Defeat of the Spanish Floating Batteries at Gibraltar’ (13 Sept. 1782). Having to introduce into it the portraits of four Hanoverian generals, Copley, accompanied by his wife and eldest daughter, went to Hanover to paint their likenesses, furnished with an autograph letter of introduction from George III, which secured for them a most hospitable reception. In society they met the Charlotte of Goethe's ‘Werther,’ but were sorely disappointed to find in her none of the charm with which the novelist had invested her in what was to them a favourite romance. This picture, no