Copley’s Cato or, The Art of Slavery in the Age of British Liberty

These pages from several chapters of Kamensky’s manuscript, Copley: A Life in Color, pull at a knotty thread in Copley’s biography as it did through his world: the tangle of slavery and liberty. We follow the artist as he became, like many in his place and time, an owner of men and women. Shortly thereafter, the painter pioneered images that revolutionized the portrayal of people of African descent in Western art. Our discussion will explore the seeming contradiction between the roles bondspeople played in Copley’s American household and upon his epic British canvases.