Sir William Pepperrell (1746-1816) y su familia

This family portrait depicts a fictional scene. William Pepperrell commissioned the painting after losing both his family’s fortune and his wife, Elizabeth Pepperrell. In this portrait the family is together again, surrounded by symbols of wealth. An earlier version of this portrait included a Black servant. The figure may have been left out of the final version because slavery was a highly debated topic in England.

Pepperrell was one of the wealthiest men in New England in the 18th century. He was a soldier and merchant in colonial Massachusetts. He owned many enslaved people and helped finance the slave trade. His wife also came from a family that enslaved people. When the American Revolution began, he lost his properties and much of his family’s wealth because he was a committed loyalist to the British Crown. Pepperrell and his family fled to England in 1776. Elizabeth became ill and died during their voyage.

John Singleton Copley started out painting portraits of wealthy people in colonial New England. Some of the people he painted in Boston became key figures in the American Revolution. Copley, like Pepperrell, was a loyalist supporter of the British. He moved to London at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. He remained in London and had a successful career painting portraits of wealthy patrons and historical scenes.

The cracks in the surface of Copley’s painting are the result of the top layer of paint drying faster than the deeper layers. “Scurf and scab” and “alligatoring” are terms used to describe this cracked paint issue. It was a common problem for artists in the 18th century, especially in England. The NCMA Conservation team used a process called inpainting to make the most obvious cracks in this painting less visible.