Gulian Verplanck

Description

Gulian Verplanck sits in a blue coat and pale waistcoat in John Singleton Copley’s portrait of 1771. His powdered hair and illuminated face stand against a dark background, while his arm and chair give the half-length figure a settled, slightly leaning position. Copley portrays a young man before the banking and political achievements of his later life, letting his appearance and bearing establish the immediate encounter.

The work asks the viewer to consider how expression and bearing can establish an individual within the conventions of portraiture. Clothing and pose contribute to that presentation, but the face remains the center of recognition. Copley’s attention makes the image more than a name accompanied by a date: it preserves the particular visual relationship between the sitter and the observer. The portrait’s historical distance coexists with the immediacy of looking at another person.

Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the John Singleton Copley collection.