John Singleton Copley 1738-1815

Mrs. Samuel Watts (the sitter)
By descent in the family
Mrs. T.J. Lee, Longwood, Massachusetts, 1873 (great great granddaughter of sitter)
Mr. Frederick S. Moseley, Boston, Massachusetts, 1928
Mr. Frederick S. Moseley, Jr., New York
Mr. Frederick S. Moseley, III (sold: Sotheby's, New York, January 24-27, 1990, lot 1300B, illustrated in color)
Acquired by the present owner at the above sale

Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, John Singleton Copley, February-March 1938, no. 82, p. 29
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Boston, Massachusetts, Museum of Fine Arts, John Singleton Copley, 1738-1815, September 1965-March 1966, pp. 61, 138, illustrated p. 62

Augustus Thorndike Perkins, Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley, Boston, Massachusetts,
1873, p. 120
Frank W. Bayley, Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley, Boston, Massachusetts, 1910, p. 257
Frank W. Bayley, The Life and Works of John Singleton Copley, Founded on the Work of Augustus Thorndike Perkins, Boston, Massachusetts, 1915, p. 257
Barbara Neville Parker and Anne Bolling Wheeler, John Singleton Copley: American Portraits in Oil, Pastel, and Miniature with Biographical Sketches, Boston, Massachusetts, 1938, p. 207, illustrated pl. 100
Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley In America, 1738-1774, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966, p. 74, 115, 118, illustrated fig. 270 

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John Singleton Copley's portrait of Mrs. Samuel Watts reflects the stylistic shift that emerged in the artist's work during the late 1760s and early 1770s. The changes, which were first manifest in Copley's pastels and later in his oils, included dark backgrounds, a restrained palette, and intense contrasts between darkness and light. While there is no direct causal evidence explaining the changes in the artist's style, Jules David Prown posits that Copley's increasingly sober paintings "seem to reflect the darkening political skies ... as the storm clouds of revolution gathered over Boston" (John Singleton Copley in America, 1738-1774, 1966, p. 83). This portrait was likely painted in 1770, the year Mrs. Watts was widowed. Dressed in black satin, Mrs. Watts is set against a dark brown background and located within a painted spandrel. With the exception of her head, which is illuminated with a bright light, the work is nearly uniform in color. The well-lit, right side of her face is sharply contrasted with the brown background and the chiaroscuro on the left of her face. The other element in the painting that commands attention is the white widow's cap, its pleated ruffle rendered with a looser brushstroke. The success of Copley's portrait of Mrs. Watts owes to the interplay between shades at the extremes of the tonal spectrum.

Mrs. Watts was born Sarah Osborne in 1715, and in 1756, two years after her first husband Thomas Oxnard died, she married Judge Samuel Watts. The judge owned a considerable portion of land in the town of Chelsea, located just across the Mystic River from Boston. As the wife of one of Chelsea's most prominent citizens, Sarah belonged to the privileged class of colonial Americans who could commission a luxury item such as a portrait, particularly one painted by the country's foremost portraitist. Copley was a master at integrating the accoutrements of wealth and social status into the portraits of his prominent sitters. Regarding eighteenth century portraiture, Paul Staiti has observed that "Who a person was—or seemed to be—was a matter of reading what that person possessed. Objects in Copley's portraits ... were props fashioned by the artist into images that fulfilled the desire of elite clients who wanted to assert their position and social identity in materially potent ways that were visible to eighteenth century viewers.... There are, of course, significant exceptions to the rule that Copley usually concentrated on things and the consequent consumer identity they suggest. Many of his most compelling portraits ... are unadorned"   (John Singleton Copley in America, 1995, p. 54, 70).

For some sitters, this lack of adornment served an economic purpose, as the portraits were less expressive when they required less time to paint; however, some wealthy clients as a personal preference, opted for this unembellished style. For Mrs. Watts, simplicity was a signifier with its own intrinsic value. The conspicuous lack of worldly goods communicated a persona appropriate to a prominent eighteenth century widow. Her direct gaze and simple presentation portray a subject who is chaste and austere, and the notion of prominence is conveyed by the existence of the portrait itself.