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John Bours
John Bours
Image © Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved.

John Bours

Artist (American, 1738–1815)
Dateabout 1763
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionscanvas: 127.6 × 101.9 cm (50 1/4 × 40 1/8 in.)
framed: 142.2 × 117.8 cm (56 × 46 3/8 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineFunds from the bequest of Mrs. Hester Newton Wetherell
Object number1908.7
Label TextIn an era when portraiture was the primary subject of colonial painters in America, Copley set an unprecedented standard for conveying both the physical and the psychological presence of his sitters. Strategically employing light and shadow to enhance the mood, Copley depicts John Bours as a contemplative scholar seated in a Queen Anne-style chair, legs crossed, and gazing off the canvas. The partially unbuttoned waistcoat and relaxed right arm holding a partially open book further exudes the immediacy of informality. A virtuoso at representing textures, Copley differentiates between the visual effects of the soft, brown velvet suit, the crisp, white cuffs, and the hard sheen of the mahogany chair. These luxurious indicate the sitter’s wealth accrued from participation in global trade. As a merchant in Rhode Island, Bours imported goods from Europe and the West Indies, including textiles, tea, coffee, sugar, indigo, and spices—all commodities that benefitted from unpaid labor. New research led to the discovery that the sitter counted among his assets Cato Bours, an enslaved man, whose value was given as £120. Source: “An Account of the Negro Slaves Inlisted into the Continental Battalions, and to Whom They Did Belong, with the Valuation of Each Slave and Notes Given. 1778,” in Rhode Island Historical Tracts, ed. Sidney Smith Rider (Providence, 1877). ProvenanceCopley Gallery, Boston MA
On View
On view
Lucretia Chandler, Mrs. John Murray
John Singleton Copley
1763
Sarah Tyler (Mrs. Samuel Phillips Savage)
John Singleton Copley
about 1763–1764
Hannah Babcock Bours
Joseph Blackburn
1759
Deborah Scollay Melville
John Singleton Copley
about 1762
Joseph Barrell
John Singleton Copley
about 1767
John Waldo
John Waldo Durant
1791
Dr. John Green
Edwin T. Billings
1858
John Freake
Freake-Gibbs Painter
about 1671–1674
Conway Valley, New Hampshire
John Frederick Kensett
1854
Mary Coffin
John Brewster Jr.
about 1810