Richard Dana

John Singleton Copley's 1770 oil-on-canvas portrait of Richard Dana is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The work is classified within the museum's American Wing and is cataloged under the accession number 1970.177. It depicts the subject as a man in a formal portrait genre and measures 101.6 cm in height by 127 cm in width.

While the source material confirms the artwork's current location, creator, date, and physical dimensions, it does not provide specific details regarding its ownership history prior to the Met or a list of past exhibitions.

The portrait of Richard Dana by John Singleton Copley, painted in 1770, is held in The American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is discussed as an example of Copley's colonial-era American portraiture, in which British portrait conventions were adapted to record the appearance and status of elite New England sitters. The work reflects Copley's noted skill in realistic rendering and compositional balance, qualities for which his portraits are recognized within the canon of early American art.

John Singleton Copley's 1770 oil on canvas, Portrait of Richard Dana, depicts the Boston lawyer and future judge seated in a three-quarter view within a domestic interior. Dana is portrayed wearing a dark coat and waistcoat, his posture relaxed yet dignified as he rests one hand on a table laden with legal texts and papers. Copley utilizes a restrained palette dominated by deep browns and blacks, contrasted by the warm flesh tones of the sitter's face and the white of his cravat.

The composition emphasizes Dana's intellectual character through the careful rendering of the books, which signify his profession and learning. Painted during the height of Copley's colonial career in Boston, just prior to his departure for Europe, the work exemplifies the artist's mastery of psychological depth and tactile realism. It stands as a significant example of American portraiture from the pre-Revolutionary era, capturing the stature of the colonial elite with a directness and lack of allegorical flourish that distinguishes Copley's American period from his later, more academic European style.