Elizabeth Greenleaf

John Singleton Copley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

While there is no doubt of Copley's innate talent, these portraits give new meaning to the term precocious. About the age of fifteen, with no formal training and very little art to study, Copley not only could paint but also knew that his patrons would be best served with accurate but richly embellished likenesses. The handsome siblings, offspring of John and Priscilla Brown Greenleaf of Boston, wear just the sort of elaborate, inventive costumes that became the artist's forte. Copley's source for John's (2002.611) exotic cap and the boy's pose was a print after Sir Godfrey Kneller's portrait of Lord Bury as a child.

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