Princeton NJ Events Calendar

Artists' Eyes on the American Revolution: John Singleton Copley, Painting Realism and History

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Sunday June 14, 2026
2:00 PM

Ewing Branch? 61 Scotch Road Ewing, NJ 08628 609-882-3148

Presented by Dr. Michael Norris, former Metropolitan Museum of Art Museum Educator. Dr. Norris will give a talk about the greatest and most influential painter in Colonial America, John Singleton Copley (1738-1815). He prospered as an artist by creating hundreds of portraits that were both striking in their precise realism and in the importance of some of their sitters, such as Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams. However, rising political turmoil in Colonial America, along with Copley's dissatisfaction with the limited art scene there, brought him to London in 1774, where he created portraits while also producing large, realistic, and dramatic scenes of contemporary history, often accompanied by prints to offer to a mass market. Sponsored by the Friends of the Ewing Library. Registration is required.