Copley and Savage

Permanent Collection - as of Fall 2008

MMA

In the Fall of 2008, two important works of American art were added to the collection of The Mint Museum: Jonathan Singleton Copley's painting St. Cecillia, A Portrait (Mrs. Richard Crowninshield Derby) and Augusta Savage's sculpture, Gamin. Due to their significance, this special wiki page has been created as a reference tool for information about these works and the artists that created them. Curator of American Art Jonathan Stuhlman has also selected some print resources now available on the exhibition cart in the library.

A list of Copley and Savage print resources from MARCO - The Mint Art Research Catalog Online

Jonathan Singleton Copley, American, 1738-1815

• "He was the greatest American artist of the colonial period." -Dictionary of Art Oxford: Grove, 1996.
• Also described as a "superb colorist," a superb pastellist," and a "first-rate painter of miniatures" who "created an original American style."
• Born in Boston, Copley enjoyed early success as a portrait painter. He moved to England at the age of 36 to further his career and studies, becoming not only a popular figure but a respected artist alternating his portraits with historical paintings.
• Carrie Rebora Barratt, curator and Copley scholar, wrote this essay on Copley for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.
• For more, see her book Jonathan Singleton Copley in America, in The Mint Museum Library among other references.
• The artist file in the library on Copley includes a number of articles from magazines, small exhibition catalogs as well as the Dictionary of Art entry noted above.
• The exhibition catalog "A Jeffersonian Ideal: Selections from the Dr. and Mrs. Henry C. Landon III Collection of American Fine and Decorative Arts" features Copley's St. Cecillia on its cover and provides an excellent essay on Copley, the painting and the subject.
• The Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham 1739-1776  (1914) is available in full-text through Google Books. Pelham was Copley's step-father and a portrait painter.
• Another book available in full through Google Books is Old Boston Days and Ways (1909) by Mary Caroline Crawford that not only features the St. Cecillia painting as its frontspiece illustration, it also contains information on Copley and the painting's subject, Mrs. Richard (Mary Coffin) Derby.
• Read Mary Coffin Derby's diary and letters in 1803 and look for the July 4, 1803 entry where she visits Copley!
• John Singleton Copley's Portraits : A Technical Study of Three Representative Examples (with images) by J. William Shank from the Journal of American Institute for Conservation
• A large image of the painting with the capabilty to zoom in from The University of Virginia Art Museum page
• Four images of Copley's work from The Art Institute of Chicago (with enlargements)

 Augusta Savage, American, 1892-1962 

• In his book A History of African American Artists, Romare Bearden refers to Savage, sculptor, activist and teacher, as ". . . one of the most significant leaders of black artists to emerge in the 1920s."
• An excellent short biography is available from the Smithsonian American Art Museum website.
• Savage was the first black artist to be elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, now known as the National Association of Women Artists.
• Augusta Savage page from the the online exhibition portfolio, Harlem 1900-1940: An African American Community created by the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.
• In The Archives of American Art online, here is a photograph of the artist in her studio. The Archive also contains letters from some of Savage's associates who have written about her and her impact on their lives, including Jacob Lawrence and Hugh Samson.
• In 1937, Savage was commissioned to create a sculpture for the 1939 New York World's Fair and for that Fair she created her largest work, The Harp (also known as Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing). Unfortunately, at the close of the Fair, the sculpture was destroyed along with work by other artists created for the event.
• The book African Americans in Florida has this essay and discussion topics (even though her birth date is given incorrectly).
• A short article about the sculpture Gamin from The Cleveland Museum of Art.
• A full sized image of Gamin
• Bearden's excellent biographical essay on Savage in his History (see above), concludes: 
  • Despite her enormous talent and drive, Savage's creative efforts were first cruelly frustrated by discrimination and then crushed by the Depression and the struggles in which she found herself. . . Her hope of nurturing young black artists - "My monument will be in their work" - has been fully realized. At the same time, her sharp self-assessment - "I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting" - is not exactly true, as Gamin testifies more than a century later.

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Created by Joyce Weaver, Librarian