Lucretia Chandler, Mrs. John Murray

Artist John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)

Date1763

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 126.7 × 101.6 cm (49 7/8 × 40 in.)
framed: 145.1 × 120.7 × 7 cm (57 1/8 × 47 1/2 × 2 3/4 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineBequest of H. Daland Chandler

Terms

Object number1969.37

Label TextBy the 1760s, Copley—painter to New England’s merchant elite—dominated portraiture in pre-Revolutionary America. He was particularly skilled at depicting realistic textures: Lucretia Chandler’s porcelain skin, lace cuffs, and the drapery folds of her gown. Many of the background elements in this portrait came from English prints. Much of Lucretia’s privileged lifestyle reflected here came from her family’s wealth, which was augmented by their involvement in chattel slavery. A year before Copley painted her, her father, Judge John Chandler II (1683-1762), died, leaving his widow “my Negro Sylvia” and one of his daughters a “Negro Boy (Worcester),” who he asked “be Treated with humanity & Tenderness and at little distance from his Mother as may well be.” Lucretia relied on the institution of slavery throughout her life—from childhood to her subsequent marriage to another slaveholder. Source: From Bondage to Belonging: The Worcester Slave Narratives, ed. B. Eugene McCarthy and Thomas L. Doughton (Amherst, 2007), pp. xxviii–xxix.ProvenanceThe sitter Lucretia Chandler Murray (1730–1768) and her husband John Murray (1720–1794); by bequest to their daughter Lucretia Murray (1762–1836), 1794; by bequest to her first cousin once removed Nathaniel Chandler (1772–1852) and his wife Dolly Chandler (1783–1869), South Lancaster, Massachusetts, 1836; to their daughter Mary Greene Chandler Ware (Mrs. John Ware) (1818–1907), South Lancaster; by bequest to her nephew Francis Ward Chandler (1844–1926), Boston, 1907; by gift to his son Henry Daland Chandler (1884–1969), Boston, Christmas, 1921. On deposit at the Worcester Art Museum, beginning 1965.

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