Mrs. Daniel Hubbard (Mary Greene)

c. 1764

John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)

John Singleton Copley was largely self-taught, his only formal training from his stepfather Peter Pelham, an English artist who specialized in mezzotint engraving. He nonetheless garnered considerable success as a portrait painter before the Revolutionary War. The sitter here, Mary Greene Hubbard, was a member of Boston’s merchant class (Copley’s portrait of her husband, Daniel Hubbard [1947.27], is also in the Art Institute collection). Her pose, gown, and background were precisely copied from a British engraving of a noblewoman, yet Copley distinguished the work as his own by capturing the figure’s individual features as well as the surfaces and colors of the luxurious fabrics. A decade later, he left colonial Massachusetts for England to further his career and simultaneously escape the strong political divides among family, friends, and patrons amid the impending Revolution.

Status: On View, Gallery 167
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: John Singleton Copley
Title: Mrs. Daniel Hubbard (Mary Greene)
Place: England (Place depicted)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1764
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 127.6 × 100.9 cm (50 1/4 × 39 3/4 in.)
Credit Line: Art Institute of Chicago Purchase Fund
Reference Number: 1947.28
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/59787/manifest.json

Frank W. Bayley, A Sketch of the Life and a List of Some of the Works of John Singleton Copley (Boston, 1910).
Frank W. Bayley, Five Colonial Artists of New England (Boston, 1929).
James T. Flexner, John Singleton Copley (Boston, 1948).
B. N. Parker and A.B. Wheeler, John Singleton Copley, American Portraits in Oil, Pastel, and Miniature with Biographical Sketches (Cambridge, MA, 1938).
Jules David Prown. John Singleton Copley (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 2 vols.
David Hanks, “American Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago,” Magazine Antiques (Sept. 1973), 408–17.
Trevor Fairbrother, “John Singleton Copley’s Use of British Mezzotints for His American Portraits: A Reappraisal Prompted by New Discoveries,” Arts Magazine 55 (Mar. 1981), 122–30.
Davida Tennenbaum Deutsch, “Needlework Patterns and Their Use in America,” Magazine Antiques (Feb. 1991), 368–81.
T.H. Breen, “The Meaning of ‘Likeness’: Portrait–Painting in an Eighteenth–Century Consumer Society,” The Portrait in Eighteenth–Century America (Newark, 1993).
Carrie Rebora and Paul Staiti, John Singleton Copley in America, (New York, 1995).
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998).
Carroll Smith–Rosenberg, This Violent Empire, (The University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Loan Exhibition, Feb. 28–?,1883, lent by William Scollay Whitwell.
Worcester Art Museum, Mass., New England Painting, 1700–1775, Feb. 17–Mar. 31, 1943, cat. 35, lent by Mr. and Mrs. Henry D. Tudor.
Art Institute of Chicago, From Colony to Nation, Apr. 21–June 19, 1949, cat. 33.
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Likeness of America, 1680–1820, July 5–Sept. 4, 1949, cat. 14.
Birmingham Museum of Art, Opening Exhibition, Apr. 8–June 3, 1951.
Art Institute of Chicago, Two Centuries of American Art, 1750-1950, Oct. 1, 1959–Jan. 10, 1960, no cat. [downloadable checklist available].
Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum, The Face of Liberty, Dec. 23, 1975–Feb. 8, 1976, p. 93 .

Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Hubbard, Boston, from 1764 to 1796; by descent to Mrs. Daniel Hubbard, Boston, from 1796 to 1808; by descent to Henry Hubbard, Boston, from 1808 to 1844; by descent to Mary Greene Hubbard, Boston, from 1844 to 1882; by descent to William Scollay Whitwell, Boston, from 1882 to 1899; by descent to his daughter Mary Hubbard Whitwell, Brookline, Mass, from 1899 to 1908; by descent to her sister, Mrs. William Tudor (Elizabeth Whitwell), Boston, from 1908 to 1929; by descent to her son, Henry Dubois Tudor, Cambridge, Mass, from 1929 to 1947; the Art Institute of Chicago, 1947.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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