Featuring Mrs. Watson

Mrs. George Watson, by John Singleton Copley is currently on view at the Greenville County Museum in Greenville, South Carolina in our traveling exhibition Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Even before focusing on her strong face, you are swept up in Mrs. Watson's crimson dress. It is dazzling, with sweeping strokes to show off its perfect fit across her slender torso. The left sleeve, highlighted with thick bands of pink, reveals just how lavish this satiny fabric is. Pearl clips fasten the heavy rich material above the dainty lace trim. The white satin drapery sends a shimmering horizontal line across the canvas, leading from Mrs. Watson's right hand to the table, where she clasps a valuable Delft vase, which holds an imported, and equally costly, tulip.

The sitter, Elizabeth Oliver Watson, was a cousin of Copley's wife, daughter of a Boston judge, and wife of a prominent Tory merchant. Late-eighteenth-century Boston was a vital center of shipping and trade in America and Copley's clientele appreciated the fact that he included in their portraits examples of the quality merchandise that they so prized.

Source: Amy Pastan. Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000).

Pictured: John Singleton Copley, (1738 USA–1815 England), Mrs. George Watson,1765, oil, 49 7/8 x 40 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Partial gift of Henderson Inches, Jr., in honor of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Inches, and museum purchase made possible in part by Mr. and Mrs. R. Crosby Kemper through the Crosby Kemper Foundation; the American Art Forum; and the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.