Colonial American Art and Paintings

Colonial American art means the art made in Britain's North American colonies, mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries, before the Revolution. The Getty's Art & Architecture Thesaurus, which also lists it as Early American, says the term generally refers to the British colonies on the East Coast, not the French or Spanish ones, and may also cover styles that lasted into the early 1800s after independence. In painting it means above all portraits: the National Gallery of Art in Washington says portraiture was the genre most often commissioned in colonial and Federal America.

Sources: Getty AAT: Colonial North American · National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995)

Colonial American paintings are mostly portraits that show off a family's wealth: silk, satin and lace, imported goods, and props such as ledgers, books and a ship seen through a window. Painters often borrowed poses from English prints; Harvard Art Museums says Robert Feke modeled his sitters' clothes, gestures and poses on engravings after Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir Peter Lely. Faces were painted closely from life, while the settings were often invented: Harvard calls Copley's Boston likenesses a blend of fact and fiction.

Sources: Harvard Art Museums: Susannah Speakman Inman · Harvard Art Museums: Sarah Morecock Boylston · Art Institute of Chicago: Richard Bill

The colonial period in American art runs from the 1600s to the Revolution of 1776. The Getty's art vocabulary places the colonial style primarily in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the oldest portraits in our collection known to have been painted in the colonies, such as Wait Still Winthrop, date from about 1700. The Revolution split the painters: Copley left Boston for London in 1774, and the National Gallery of Art notes that of the three most talented painters born in the colonies, Charles Willson Peale, Benjamin West and Copley, only Peale lived in America after the war.

Sources: Getty AAT: Colonial North American · Harvard Art Museums: Wait Still Winthrop · National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995)

The best-known American colonial painters are John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale and Benjamin West, together with John Smibert, Robert Feke, Joseph Blackburn and John Trumbull. The National Gallery of Art calls Copley the most talented artist in colonial America and Stuart the pre-eminent portraitist of Federal America. Tate's 1946 exhibition of American painting began the story with Smibert's group portrait of Dean Berkeley of 1729 and called Robert Feke the first native-born painter of note.

Sources: National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995) · Tate: American Painting (1946 exhibition)

Most colonial American paintings are portraits because portraits were what colonial patrons paid for. The National Gallery of Art says portraiture was the genre most frequently commissioned in colonial and Federal America, and that John Wollaston, who painted more than two hundred portraits in the colonies, was meeting a growing demand for formal portraits for the new homes of merchants and landowners. A portrait recorded a family's wealth and standing: Copley's Boylston portraits at Harvard show the family in imported silks, with ledgers and a company ship.

Sources: National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995) · Harvard Art Museums: Nicholas Boylston

John Singleton Copley (1738–1815) was a Boston-born portrait painter whom the National Gallery of Art calls the most talented artist in colonial America. Trained by his stepfather, the English engraver Peter Pelham, he painted 350 portraits between 1753 and 1774, mostly of Bostonians, the Art Institute of Chicago says; his sitters included Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Mercy Otis Warren. In 1774 he left for London, where Watson and the Shark (1778) made his name as a history painter.

Sources: National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995) · Art Institute of Chicago: Daniel Hubbard

Watson and the Shark shows a real attack: in 1749 the 14-year-old Brook Watson was seized by a shark while swimming in Havana Harbor and lost his right foot before sailors pulled him out. Copley showed the painting at the Royal Academy in 1778, where it caused a sensation; Watson, by then a London merchant and later Lord Mayor of London, kept it and left it to Christ's Hospital. The National Gallery of Art notes that the harpooner's pose recalls Raphael's Saint Michael driving Satan out of heaven. Copley painted three versions, now in Washington, Boston and Detroit.

Sources: National Gallery of Art: Watson and the Shark (Google Arts & Culture) · National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995)

Gilbert Stuart painted the best-known portrait of George Washington, the unfinished Athenaeum portrait of 1796, which is the image on the one-dollar bill. Harvard Art Museums says Stuart made more than a hundred portraits of Washington in three types: the Athenaeum, the Vaughan, which shows the right side of his face, and the full-length Lansdowne. The earliest known portrait of Washington is older: Charles Willson Peale painted him in 1772 in the uniform of the Virginia Regiment, and in 1779 Pennsylvania commissioned Peale's full-length, the first official portrait of Washington.

Sources: Harvard Art Museums: George Washington (Vaughan type) · Encyclopedia Virginia (Virginia Humanities): George Washington as a Colonel in the Virginia Regiment · National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995)

John Trumbull painted the famous Declaration of Independence in the U.S. Capitol, between 1817 and 1818. It shows the draft being presented to Congress on June 28, 1776, not the signing, and Trumbull included 47 men, painted from life or from life portraits, to preserve the faces of the founders. The Architect of the Capitol says an 1820 engraving by Asher B. Durand made it his most famous painting; it is pictured on the back of the two-dollar bill. A smaller first version, begun in 1786, is at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Sources: Architect of the Capitol: Declaration of Independence · National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995)

No. Colonial American art in the usual sense is the work of trained or professional portrait painters, while folk art is made by artists without academic training. The National Gallery of Art keeps them apart: its catalogue of 18th-century American paintings covers trained artists, and works by self-taught painters have a separate catalogue of American naive paintings. The line is not always sharp, since it describes Joseph Badger as apparently self-taught. Self-taught portrait painters such as Ammi Phillips are on our folk art page.

Sources: National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995)

Spanish colonial art is the art made in Spain's colonies in the Americas, such as New Spain, and it is a separate tradition from Colonial American art. The Getty's art vocabulary says Colonial North American generally refers to the British colonies on the East Coast, not to the French or Spanish colonies. American museums collect both: the Smithsonian American Art Museum says its collection begins with works from New Spain and New England, including a painting of Saint Barbara made in Puerto Rico about 1680–90.

Sources: Getty AAT: Colonial North American · Smithsonian American Art Museum: Early American Art

The largest groups are in Washington and Boston. The National Gallery of Art says its paintings by Copley are rivaled only by those in collections in his native Boston; it also owns Gilbert Stuart's The Skater and Edward Savage's The Washington Family. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington has Stuart's Lansdowne portrait and owns his Athenaeum portrait jointly with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge holds Copley's Boylston family portraits, and Trumbull's four Revolutionary paintings hang in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

Sources: National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995) · National Gallery of Art: The Washington Family (Google Arts & Culture) · National Portrait Gallery, Washington: George Washington (Lansdowne Portrait) (Google Arts & Culture) · National Portrait Gallery, Washington: The Athenaeum Portrait (Google Arts & Culture) · Harvard Art Museums: Nicholas Boylston · Architect of the Capitol: Declaration of Independence

The Revolution split the colonial painters. Copley, whose sitters included Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, left Boston for London in 1774 as fighting approached, and Ralph Earl, a Loyalist, fled to England in 1778. Charles Willson Peale served with the Pennsylvania militia and painted his fellow officers, and the National Gallery of Art says he was the only one of the three most talented colonial-born painters to live in America after the war. John Trumbull, who had served with a Connecticut regiment, made the war itself his subject, starting with Bunker's Hill in 1786.

Sources: National Gallery of Art: American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen G. Miles, 1995)

Yes. The famous colonial American paintings are all by artists who died long ago, from John Greenwood in 1792 to John Trumbull in 1843, so they are in the public domain in the United States and in countries where copyright ends 70 years after the artist's death. You can download them free and use them for anything, including commercial projects. A few countries have their own rules on photographs of artworks, so check them if you publish outside the U.S.

Sources: Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain