A lost Copley found: The New York portrait of Captain Gabriel Maturin

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, November/December 2012 | In the spring of 1771 John Singleton Copley had several good reasons to look south to New York for fresh fields to conquer. Although he had effectively joined the social ranks of his clientele by marrying into one of the leading Tory families of Boston and acquired a suitable gentleman’s estate on Beacon …

In the American Grain: Art and Capital at Crystal Bridges

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, November/December 2011 | The small town of Bentonville, Arkansas, home to some 35,301 souls in the most recent census, is about to be transformed beyond recognition. Already it enjoys some modicum of renown as the ancestral abode of the Walton fam­ily: its late patriarch, Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, opened his first five and dime here …

American artists as they saw themselves

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November 2009 | In The American School (Fig. 1) Matthew Pratt portrays himself seated at his easel, the sharp profile of his head silhouetted against the canvas, which bears his signature at bottom left. Holding a palette and maulstick to steady his hand, Pratt presents himself as a painter—an astonishing act of bravado as he had just arrived in England …