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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
John Singleton Copley

Portrait of Judge Martin Howard

1767
Oil on canvas.
125.7 x 101 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
99
(
1984.3
)
Room 30
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room

Although he was not a very popular figure and was generally dealt with harshly by historians, Martin Howard, a passionate lawyer, played an important role both in North Carolina and in Rhode Island. An Act for which he was agent, enacted in Rhode Island in 1765, triggered a genuine revolt, during which an irate crow assaulted and sacked his house, forcing him to take refuge on a British ship and go back to England. Howard returned to America two years later, in 1767, and following his arrival, on 26 August, married Abigail Greenleaf, the daughter of the Sheriff of Suffolk Stephen Greenleaf, in Boston. Years later he sailed back to England with his family and died there in 1782.

Executed during the artist’s American period, the portrait in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, signed and dated in 1767, was probably painted to mark the judge’s marriage. It is consonant with the prevailing taste for official portraits in eighteenth-century England. Howard’s pose and clothing — the robes of chief justice of North Carolina, the office to which he was appointed in 1767— significantly enhance the figure of this British civil servant in America. Both the use of the exuberant red and the sweeping folds of his judge’s attire, which are offset by the bluish velvet of the chair on which he poses, set the work apart from the artist’s earlier portraits.

Paloma Alarcó

18th Centurys. XVIII-Pintura norteamericana.El retrato colonialPaintingOilcanvas
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Portrait of Judge Martin Howard. Retrato del juez Martin Howard, 1767
Portrait of Judge Martin Howard
John Singleton Copley

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Portrait of Judge Martin Howard. Retrato del juez Martin Howard, 1767
Portrait of Judge Martin Howard
John Singleton Copley

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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