The Double Adventure of John Singleton Copley, First Major Painter of the New World

by James Thomas Flexner

Hard cover

169 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

James Thomas Flexner was an American historian and biographer best known for the four-volume biography of George Washington that earned him a National Book Award in Biography and a special Pulitzer Prize. A cum laude graduate of Harvard University, Flexner worked as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune from 1929 until 1931, after which he worked as an executive secretary for the New York City Department of Health before leaving the job the following year in order to devote his full energies to writing.

Reviews

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very approachable biography about Copley, pulling together personal accounts, world events, and the changes in his painting style. The story of his life is not a particularly happy one, but it is an interesting one owing to a different perspective than one usually hears about this time period. He is a Bostonian, sympathetic with the British during the events leading up to the Revolution. Then he moves to England and tries to shake off his provincial upbringing, and finds out he is more deeply American than he realized.