  About the Artwork
  
  
  Although seven-year-old Jonathan Mountfort grew up in Boston, John Singleton Copley surrounded him with worldly details from European mezzotint prints. The Mediterranean cypress trees, rocky setting, and floral wreath were probably inspired by portrait prints of European aristocrats and royals, which Copley would have seen in the studio of his stepfather, the engraver and painter Peter Pelham (1697 – 1751).

Copley painted his subject when he was about fifteen years old. He did not have any formal training and most likely learned the fundamentals of artmaking from Pelham. His earliest works like this one date to 1753 – 55, when he created a small group of portraits and copied several mythological subjects from prints.
  
  
  Title
  Jonathan Mountfort
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1753
  
  Artist
  John Singleton Copley
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1738-1815
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
  ----------
  
  
  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 29 1/4 × 24 1/2 inches (74.3 × 62.2 cm)
  Framed: 37 1/2 × 32 5/8 × 2 5/16 inches (95.3 × 82.9 × 5.9 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, Gibbs-Williams Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  58.360
  
  
  Copyright
  ----------
