On the eve of the American Revolution, a glimpse of politics in portraiture.
John Singleton Copley, Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin (Sarah Morris), 1773, oil on ticking, 156.5 x 121.9 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art). Speakers: Dr. Kathleen A. Foster, The Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator of American Art, and Director, Center for American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Dr. Beth Harris
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:05] We’re in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, looking at a portrait by the great colonial American painter John Copley. This is [the] “Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Mifflin.” What interests me most about this portrait is the way that we’ve lost some of the ability to understand their place in society and what this portrait meant.
Dr. Kathleen A. Foster: [0:25] Just owning a portrait, especially a life-sized portrait like this, was a sign of your social position. These are Quaker people who are discouraged from showy displays of affluence, and yet here’s an extremely expensive status symbol in their living room.
Dr. Harris: [0:39] The display isn’t just in the size of the portrait, but also in what they’re wearing. I see a fabulous silk dress, what looks like a fine woolen suit. Even the furniture looks sumptuous.
Dr. Foster: [0:50] But their choices are very restrained. What this is telling you is that they’re Quakers; however, they’re wealthy Quakers. They can afford the very best. This is an ostentatious statement of their plainness.
[1:02] She is wearing a dress made of Chinese silk, the most expensive fabric on the planet. If you look at that apron, this gauzy thing that looks like it was woven by the fairies, it’s just fabulous. You can’t actually imagine wiping your hands on this apron. It is exquisite.
[1:19] Everything about her dress is expensive, but very plain. When Mr. And Mrs. Mifflin went to Boston and had their portrait painted, when they walked down the street they would’ve turned heads for being plain. Boston ladies wore a lot of lace.
[1:32] Women of this class would have worn figured — that is, patterned — silks. And so the austerity of her dress is quite special. She’s got no jewelry. Instead, she wears a flower instead of pearls or silver. He doesn’t have silver buttons on his jacket.
Dr. Harris: [1:48] We read so much about people and their class from what they wear.
Dr. Foster: [1:54] When I ask people to guess how old the people are, they’re actually much younger than you think. They’re 20-somethings, and the reason he looks older to us is that he’s powdered his hair. But many men in a formal situation would have been wearing a wig.
[2:08] He’s, again, choosing to be natural in the same way that she’s wearing flowers and not jewelry. He’s being very no-nonsense and not pretentious in just having a bit of powder on his hair.
Dr. Harris: [2:19] Copley has this amazing ability to turn paint into this variety of textures, the gleam of the wood, the reflection of the threads on the wooden table, the gleam of her silk dress. At this point, American colonists were importing a lot of luxury goods from Britain.
Dr. Foster: [2:38] Her silk is definitely imported. Probably the fabric on the chair behind her is imported from England, so their houses are full of imported goods, but the message of this painting actually is “make things at home.” “Buy America first” is the politics of this painting.
Dr. Harris: [2:55] This does focus our attention on Mrs. Mifflin and her work, which does support this idea that this is about colonists making things at home instead of importing them. This is a politics that emerges after Britain imposed taxes on the colonists — on tea, famously. By refusing to import British goods, they could exercise their power against Britain.
Dr. Foster: [3:21] In fact, the reason that they were in Boston was to meet with John Hancock and other rabble-rousers who were agitating about these import taxes.
Dr. Harris: [3:31] Let’s talk about what she’s making. It looks like fringe.
Dr. Foster: [3:34] It’s upholstery fringe. It’s something she’s doing to make her house beautiful. That’s domestic production. Although we don’t have any letter from Mrs. Mifflin saying, “I chose to be portrayed making something.” That’s why they were in Boston. He’s a budding politician, and you have to think that there’s a message in this painting.
Dr. Harris: [3:53] One of his great causes was this movement to not import and purchase British goods.
Dr. Foster: [3:58] It’s an argument for domestic manufacturing, very subtly done.
Dr. Harris: [4:02] Copley draws our attention to her and her work in so many ways.
Dr. Foster: [4:07] She is spotlit, she’s actually forward in the painting, so she’s a little bit in front, and her husband just fixes this adoring look on her so that every time you look at him, he makes you look back at her. It’s a really unusual picture, having the woman be the center of interest.
[4:24] Copley stacks their hands up so that they make a circle. They almost touch, even though in space he would have been farther behind her. It suggests their partnership in the loveliest way. It’s a fantastic painting of a marriage because you see them as a team.
[4:39] Copley himself was a royalist, a supporter of the king, and yet as a portrait artist and a businessman he had to take all comers, and he painted people of every political persuasion.
[4:49] These are people that he would not have agreed with politically. In the day, you call[ed] them Whigs, and they would have been agitating for the independence of the colonies.
Dr. Harris: [4:57] We’re right at the time of the Boston Tea Party, of rebellions against the imperial government.
Dr. Foster: [5:03] In their living room, they had this big political statement, and maybe that took the edge off of the lavishness of the portrait itself.
[5:10] [music]
