to paint portraits, and in 1754 produced an allegorical picture thirty inches long by twenty-five wide, of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan, and the next year a miniature of Washington, who came to Boston in the first flush of his reputation as an Indian fighter. 

Copley was then a boy of seventeen, and it only needs this account of his boyhood to show how inexact and misleading is the often-quoted statement from a letter by his son, Lord Lyndhurst, to the effect that his achievements were remarkable, "considering that he was entirely self-taught, and never saw a decent picture with the exception of his own until he was nearly thirty." While Perkins's suggestion that he may have been the pupil of Blackburn seems to rest on nothing but its inherent probability, he had exceptional facil­ities for his early training under his stepfather, and there were a good many pictures more than "decent" in Boston and its vicinity at that time, and Copley was in the way of seeing most of them. Besides the Smyberts and Blackburns there were portraits by foreign artists, some Knellers, and alleged Van Dycks, one of Governor Belcher by Liotard, a likeness of Richard Saltonstall said to have been painted in Holland in 1644 by Rembrandt, and particularly a copy by Smybert after Van Dyck of a cardinal's head which now hangs in the Harvard Memorial Hall, and which was studied in turn by Copley, Trumbull, and Allston. 

There seems never to have been any doubt about Copley's vocation; at seventeen he was recognized as a painter and had continual opportunity to exercise his skill. He is said to have been quiet and reserved as a boy, and his career is undiversified either by struggles against poverty or Bohemian outbreaks. He accepted the rather rigorous life of Boston, and he maintained and insisted upon his social standing as one of the upper class. His life was uneventful, but prosperous and dignified. In 1769 he married a daughter of Richard Clarke, a wealthy merchant of the town and agent of the East India Company, a marriage in every way fortunate. The strongest affection united them throughout their lives, and Mrs. Copley, who possessed much personal beauty, was introduced by her husband a number of times into his pictures. He lived in a solitary house on Beacon Hill, surrounded by his farm, as he called it, of eleven acres, in which he took great pride and pleasure.

 

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