  About the Artwork
  
  
  This portrait is one of nearly forty the Boston artist John Singleton Copley painted during a six-month stay in New York City in 1771. He befriended and depicted British field engineer John Montresor (1736 – 1799) during this stay. When Montresor traveled to Boston in November 1771, Copley asked him for advice about the home he was building. The artist wrote to his half-brother Henry Pelham, who was overseeing the construction, “If you are at a loss about any thing [sic] Capt. Montresor can and will sett [sic] you right with pleasure.”

Montresor holds a book titled FIELD ENGINR, referencing his profession in the Royal Corps of Engineers. He traveled to Detroit in 1763 and again in 1764, drawing maps of Fort Detroit and the surrounding shore of the Detroit River during a period of organized resistance by Indigenous peoples across the Great Lakes against the British army’s assertion of control in the region.
  
  
  Title
  John Montresor
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1771
  
  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.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 30 × 25 inches (76.2 × 63.5 cm)
  Framed: 38 × 33 × 3 1/2 inches (96.5 × 83.8 × 8.9 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.
  
  
  
  41.37
  
  
  Copyright
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