ut 1746 she married again, most fortunately for her son, for her
second husband was Peter Pelham, a mezzotint engraver of considerable
merit, who gave the boy lessons in drawing. He proved an apt and
precocious pupil, and by the time he had reached seventeen had executed
a number of portraits.

His reputation steadily increased, and his income from his work was so
satisfactory that he hesitated to try his fortunes in the larger field
of London. Finally, in 1774, he sailed for England, and in the next year
sent for his family to join him there. The opening of the Revolution
persuaded him to stay in England, as there would be no demand for his
work in America in so tumultuous a time. In London his talents brought
him ample patronage, his income enabled him to live the stately and
dignified life he loved, so that, when the Revolution ended, there
seemed no reason why he should abandon it for the crudities of Boston.
He therefore continued in London until the end of his life, which came
in 1815.

Copley was a laborious and painstaking craftsman, setting down what he
saw upon canvas with uncompromising sincerity. He worked very slowly
and many stories are told of how he tried the patience of his sitters.
The result was a series of portraits which preserve the very spirit of
the age--serious, self-reliant and capable, pompous and lacking humor.
His later work has an atmosphere and repose which his early work lacks,
but it is less important to America. His early portraits, which hang on
the walls of so many Boston homes, and which Oliver Wendell Holmes
called the titles of nobility of the old Boston families, are priceless
documents of history.

Copley was an artist from choice rather than necessity; he followed
painting because it assured him a good livelihood, and he was a patient
and painstaking craftsman. His life was serene and happy; he was without
the tribulations, as he seems to have been without the enthusiasms of
the great artist. Not so with his most famous contemporary, Benjamin
West, whose life was filled to overflowing with the contrast and
picturesqueness which Copley's lacked.

West was born in 1738 at a little Pennsylvania frontier settlement. His
parents were Quakers, and to the rigor and simplicity of frontier life
were added those of that sect. But even these handicaps could not turn
the boy aside from his vocation, for he was a born painter, if there
ever was one. At the age of six he tried to draw, wi