In contrast with Copley’s colonial period, numerous studies for portraits and history paintings survive from the artist’s career in London, which dates from 1775 until 1815. This study relates to a commission to create a full-length portrait of William Murray (1705–1793) from the artist’s widely acclaimed contemporary epic history painting The Death of the Earl of Chatham (Tate Gallery, London, on loan to the National Portrait Gallery, London). In this monumental composition, a scene of the House of Lords on the fateful day when William Pitt, the earl of Chatham, fought for continuing the war effort in the American colonies, Lord Mansfield appears seated at a table at far left.

This study and the finished oil indicate Copley’s efforts to win portrait commissions from the sitters who appeared in his contemporary history paintings. Copley generated from Chatham, in fact, four portraits of various sitters. The artist exhibited the full-length portrait of Mansfield at the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition of 1783, perhaps in an effort to advertise such commissions while reminding his audience of the larger history painting, which had no buyer at that time.

Related examples: The Bayou Bend drawing is one of six known studies for Copley’s full-length oil portrait of William Murray, First Earl of Mansfield (1782–83, National Portrait Gallery, London). The other studies for the portrait belong to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the British Museum, London; and a private collector.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.