Portrait of Thomas Gage

Portrait of Thomas Gage is a 1768 portrait painting by the American artist John Singleton Copley depicting the British general Thomas Gage.

Portrait of Thomas Gage
ArtistJohn Singleton Copley
Year1768
TypeOil on canvas, portrait
Dimensions127 cm × 101 cm (50 in × 40 in)
LocationYale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut

Gage was Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in North America having served there during the Seven Years War. Gage was paying a visit from his headquarters in New York to Boston where Copley was based. The commission marked an important step forward in Copley's career.[1] He depicts the general in the style Joshua Reynolds used for military portraits.[2]

Once completed, Gage hung it prominently in his house in Broad Street in New York.[3] Gage then shipped it to London where it hung in the general's residence in Arlington Street in Piccadilly and was widely admired, a further encouragement for Copley's later move to Britain.[4]

Mrs. Thomas Gage. Copley's 1771 portrait of the general's wife Margaret Kemble Gage.

Today it is in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut.[5] Copley also painted his American-born wife Margaret Kemble Gage a few years later in his Mrs. Thomas Gage.

References

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Bibliography

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  • Kamensky, Jane. A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
  • Prown, Jules David. John Singleton Copley: In England, 1774–1815. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1966.