John Singleton Copley
Portrait of Elizabeth Byles (Mrs. Gawen Brown, 1737–1763)

Portrait of Elizabeth Byles (Mrs. Gawen Brown, 1737–1763)

Public Domain

Portrait of Elizabeth Byles (Mrs. Gawen Brown, 1737–1763)
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Portrait of Elizabeth Byles (Mrs. Gawen Brown, 1737–1763)
Date1763
Made inBoston, Massachusetts, United States
MediumPastel on laid paper, mounted on bleached plain-weave linen
DimensionsSheet: 17 1/2 × 14 1/2 in. (44.5 × 36.8 cm)
Credit LineThe Bayou Bend Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg
Object numberB.54.21
Not on view

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Department
Bayou Bend
Description

Continental late Baroque and Rococo fashion in the early 1700s included the production of pastel portraits, a trend that such artists as Henrietta Johnston (d. 1729) and Benjamin Blyth (see B.61.106.1) followed in the American colonies. Copley too, experimented with pastels, beginning in 1758, surpassing his precursors and colleagues. Despite his facility for working in pastel, he used the medium for only about fourteen years. As early as 1766, Benjamin West (1738–1820), Copley’s mentor abroad, discouraged him from continuing to practice in this medium, claiming it to be inferior to the oil medium used by the more serious history and Grand Manner portrait painters, whose ranks Copley aspired to join.

The portrait of Elizabeth Byles Brown is one of approximately fifty-five surviving pastel portraits by Copley. The portrait dates to 1763, one year after Copley expressed his ambition to succeed in this medium in a letter to the eminent Swiss pastellist Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702–1789). As he did for his oils, Copley borrowed props and poses from Continental and English portrait mezzotints, in this case, the portrait of Maria, Countess of Coventry, by Thomas Frye (1710–1762). Copley modified the prototype by reducing the elaborate headdress to single strands of pearls woven through the sitter’s hair, which ends in a long braid; simplifying the necklace to three simple strands of pearls; and eliminating the dangle earrings altogether (the bracelet and luxurious ermine-trimmed robe remain). The artist also turned the head of the sitter so that she gently gazes toward the viewer. The feathery quality of the pastel medium endows the work with a soft, ethereal glow.

Although Copley portrayed Elizabeth Byles Brown as a modified version of an elegant countess, she was, in fact, the daughter of the minister Mather Byles (see B.61.69) and Anna Noyes and the wife of Gawen Brown (1719–1801), an esteemed Boston clockmaker. Something of a poet, she penned the following lines “on her Infant Son,” Mather Brown (1761–1831), who eventually would become a portraitist: “When with a Parents partial Eye / My Babe within my Arms I spy, / I form a thousand airy Schemes / And paint his future Life in Dreams. / But ah! how different may it be / From what a mother hopes to see / The lovely Infant ne’er may know / A joyous Moment here below: / Yet oh that Heaven would hear my Prayer, / And pour its Blessings on my Heir. / Grant him those Graces from above, / Of Faith, Humility and Love / Let him thy Loving Favor find, / As years increase enlarge his Mind.” The sitter, however, did not live long after voicing her dreams, wishes, and prayers for her son; she died the same year Copley produced this portrait.

Related examples: Copley painted the sitter again in oils in the same year, possibly after the pastel: Mrs. Gawen Brown, c. 1763, private collection.

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.


ProvenanceThe sitter’s niece Mrs. William Almon (née Rebecca Byles, 1762–1853), Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; given to her daughter Mrs. George W. Hill (Emma Almon), Halifax; given to her daughter Sophie A. Hill, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England; Charles Henry Hart (1847–1918), New York; [Vose Galleries, Boston]; purchased by Thomas B. Clarke (1848–1931), New York, until 1919; [Plaza Hotel, New York, Thomas B. Clarke Collection sale, January 7, 1919]; purchased by Luke Vincent Lockwood (1871–1951), New York, until 1954; [Parke-Bernet, New York, Lockwood sale, May 13–15, 1954, lot 452]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1954; given to MFAH, by 1966.
Exhibition History"Early American Portraits Collected by Mr. Thomas B. Clarke," New York, American Art Association, January 7, 1919, no.34

Girl Scout Loan Exhibition, American Art Galleries, New York, September 25–October 9, 1929, no.828

"An Exhibition of Paintings by John Singleton Copley," Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, December 22, 1936–February 14, 1937, no.7

"John Singleton Copley, 1738–1815," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, February 1–March 15, 1938, no.14

"John Singleton Copley in America," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston June 7– August 27, 1995; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September19–January 7, 1996; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 4–April 28, 1996; Milwaukee Museum of Art, May 22–Aug. 25, 1996, no.13 (at Houston venue only).

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
[no inscriptions]
Signed and dated at center right: ISC [monogram] del.1763
[no marks]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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