Ebenezer Storer

John Singleton Copley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In September 1762, Copley asked the Swiss pastelist Jean-Étienne Liotard to send “a sett of Crayons of the very best kind such as You can recommend [for] liveliness of colour and Justness of tints. In a word let em be a sett of the very best that can be got.” Copley excelled in pastel, an extremely difficult medium. He recognized his own skill and wrote to his colleague Benjamin West that he thought “my best portraits done [are] in that way.” This portrait of the Boston merchant Ebenezer Storer exemplifies the technical and artistic skill that Copley achieved in the medium. Taking full advantage of the brilliance afforded by pastel, he rendered Storer’s damask banyan in rich tones of green that convey not only the fabric’s floral pattern but also its weight and sheen. Copley also captured the soft pile of the velvet turban, the smoothness of Storer’s forehead, and the stubble of his shaved sideburns and cheeks.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art