About the Artwork
In this striking portrait, Colonel George Lewis is silhouetted boldly against a smoky sky, the flames of battle glowing in the lower right background. Lewis had served in the British Royal Army during the successful defense of Gibraltar from its prolonged siege by French and Spanish forces from 1779 to 1783. In 1783, the City of London commissioned American-born artist John Singleton Copley to create a monumental painting of the battle in celebration that important victory. Copley spent eight years working on it, making careful portrait studies of the surviving participants before completing the twenty-five-foot-long painting in 1791 (Guildhall Museum, London). In that composition, Lewis leans against a cannon in a group of British soldiers in the lower right. Lewis’s family commissioned this portrait from Copley, based on his earlier studies, three years after Lewis’s death in 1791. The artist charged a fee of thirty-one pounds and ten shillings and delivered the painting to the Lewis family in February 1794.
Colonel George Lewis
1794
John Singleton Copley
1738-1815
American
Unknown
Oil on canvas
Unframed: 30 1/8 × 25 inches (76.5 × 63.5 cm) Framed: 37 9/16 × 32 9/16 × 2 3/4 inches (95.4 × 82.7 × 7 cm)
Paintings
American Art before 1950
Founders Society Purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Richard A. Manoogian
70.560.A
Public Domain
Markings
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Provenance
the family of Colonel Lewis. November 19, 1969, sale, Sotheby's, lot 42 (London, England)
1969, Leger Galleries, Ltd. (London, England). 1970-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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Provenance pageExhibition History
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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Suggest FeedbackPublished References
Prown, J.D. John Singleton Copley, 1774-1815, vol. 2. Cambridge, MA, 1966, pp. 489, 495-499.
Bulletin of the DIA: Annual Report 50 (1971): p. 4 (ill.).
Hood, Graham, Kathleen Pyne, and Nancy Rivard. "American Paintings Acquired During the Last Decade." Bulletin of the DIA 55, 3 (1977): pp.73-75 (ill.).
American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts. New York, 1991, pp. 70-72 (ill.).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
John Singleton Copley, Colonel George Lewis, 1794, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Richard A. Manoogian, 70.560.A.
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