John Singleton Copley
The Death of Major Peirson
(1782–4)
Tate
American painting began with the works of a few obscure artists who doubtless drifted to the New World through inability to succeed in the Old. The first painting to impress itself on the visual memory is Dean Berkeley and his Entourage, an ambitious but clumsy conversation-piece done in 1729 by John Smibert.
The first native-born painter of note was Robert Feke, whose Portrait of the lsaac Royall Family is dated 1741.
After the passing of the generation of West, Copley and Stuart no painter of comparable rank made his appearance in America.
The remarkable generation which may be said to be linked by the long-lived Sully with that of Copley and West consisted in six painters, of whom three, while retaining with pride their American citizenship, became members of foreign schools of painting, and three worked almost exclusively in their native land.
The works of James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent are a princely contribution by America to the art of Europe. The three who stayed at home, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins and Albert Pinkham Ryder, although their attainments are not less memorable, have remained outside their own country almost unknown.
