Analyzing Paul Revere's Portrait

Paul Revere is Copley’s only finished portrait of an artisan dressed in shirtsleeves and shown at work. Revere is shown half length, seated behind a highly polished table, and casually attired. He cradles his chin in his right hand and regards the viewer as if he has just looked up from the teapot in his left hand; the pot is finished but remains undecorated, and the engraving tools at Revere’s elbow attest to the work yet to come. When Copley painted Revere’s portrait, his sitter was an accomplished, well-established silversmith and master of the rococo style, both in engraving and in three dimensional hollow ware such as teapot. He completed the Sons of Liberty Bowl , now considered one of the United States’ most cherished historical treasures,

the same year Copley captured his likeness.Copley’s image of Revere is unprecedented not only in his own oeuvre but also in American colonial painting. Though Copley had produced a few portraits of craftsmen, his usual patrons were clergymen and merchants and their wives. He first depicted an artisan with the attributes of his trade in one of his earliest portraits, Peter Pelham (private collection), dated about 1754. Like Revere, the subject is seated at a table strewn with tools, but this craftsman wears a jacket, stock, and patterned waistcoat. The more formal attire makes the sitter appear posed rather than caught in the middle of his work. Peter Pelham bears striking similarities to the mezzo tint John TheophilusDesaguliers by Copley’s stepfather, Peter Pelham. Copley may have referred to Pelham’s mezzo tint and also to his own Peter Pelham for the composition, pose, and other details of Paul Revere. Both mezzo tint and early portrait, like Paul Revere, offer half-length views of figures seated behind tables with tools; each of these subjects, like Revere, is turned slightly to the side, right arm leaning on a table, left hand holding an object a magnifying glass in the case of Desaguliers and an engraving tool and burin in the case of the sitter presumed to be Pelham and each man looks straight out at the viewer.

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/paul-revere-32401