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other of the New England cities, or brought together in
official groups as in the Harvard Memorial Hall, their inherent strength makes itself felt. They take their
places as the true genii
loci as nothing else could do. Even their faults strengthen
the impression. If a bit of drawing, a hand for example, has been too difficult, it remains always the
sitter's hand, badly drawn perhaps, but not replaced by anything more facile but less true, and the same
faithfulness pervades all the details and accessories.
The velvet coats and embroidered waistcoats of the men, the satin robes and laces of the
women, are of undoubted genuineness. Even if the satin looks like tin, we know that it is satin; and if a
colonial worthy goes to the expense of silk stockings, not even the most casual observer could mistake them
for wool. In time this unremitting labor began to have its result. During the last ten years or so of his
Boston life, Copley was master of his trade and could produce what he tried to. That his portraits still
remained dry and hard, without atmosphere, was because he had not seen enough good work to recognize what he
lacked. His color, too, is mostly displeasing, or at least not pleasing, and there are but few of his
canvases that merit the praise West bestowed on "the delicious color" of his "Boy with a Squirrel." But he
was now in a position to benefit at once from increased knowledge. He was no sooner abroad than his style
gained in ease and simplicity. His portrait of Ralph Izard and his wife, painted when he was in Rome, shows
still something of the old stiffness of attitude, the over-filling with detail ; but the work is smoother,
more graceful, though still minutely finished in all its parts in a way more characteristic of the
Continental work of the time than the English, where the example of Reynolds had produced a broader, more
effective handling.
With his London life Copley's work took on more and more
of the English manner. His "Family Picture" of himself, his wife, his father-in-law, and his four young children,
painted a few years after his arrival, shows this alteration, but retains also the finer qualities of his colonial
period and is one of his very best works. The composition is not in perfect unity, and the tone is cold, with much
of a sort of claret color and his old unpleasant blue, but they are softened and harmonized with skill, and the
shadows and blacks are soft, rich, and
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