JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY IN AMERICA," the show of some 75 paintings that opened last week at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a thoroughly absorbing affair. There has never been any doubt about Copley's importance to American art. He was the best portraitist the young colony produced in the 18th century. He was also its second major cultural expatriate, after Benjamin West. His career falls into two halves, the first set in provincial Boston and New York, the second in imperial London. And yet, fine as his English work was, one may prefer his American paintings, with their hard-won...
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