Portrait Miniature of Robert Chamblett King Hooper

Object Details

Object Essay

Robert Hooper (1709–1790), the founder of a dynasty of Massachusetts shippers, traders, and merchants, earned the sobriquet “King” from the wealth he accumulated and, doubtless, from the way he displayed it. Together with a brother-in-law, Jeremiah Lee, the family dominated Marblehead commerce and society in the 1760s. It has been assumed that Copley first painted Hooper and his wife, Hannah White, in 1767, in a pair of portraits that are now separated.^{1_{Robert Hooper descended in the family until 1980; it is now in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Hannah White Hooper is in the New York Public Library (Lenox Collection). See Prown 1966, 1: 219.}} The miniature at the Department of State, however, seems to show a somewhat younger man. Hooper married Hannah, his second wife, in 1764, which is perhaps a more likely date for this miniature portrait and leads to speculation that a matching miniature of his bride was also painted. In any case, it was King Hooper’s patronage that introduced Copley to Marblehead’s mercantile upper class, described by Jules Prown as “low on education” and “partial to large paintings in oil on canvas.”^{2_{Ibid., 1: 172.}}

Surprisingly, only eight to ten miniatures that Copley painted in watercolor on ivory are known today; all of them were executed between about 1762 and about 1771. Since approximately three hundred of Copley’s colonial paintings are extant, nearly all portraits, the tiny portrait of King Hooper is a precious rarity.^{3_{Copley also painted miniatures in oil on copper, usually of larger dimensions. There are about twenty-two examples. These inventories are based on Prawn’s catalogue; see his no. 1. See also Theresa Fairbanks, “Gold Discovered: John Singleton Copley’s Portrait Miniatures on Copper,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (1999): 75–91.}} Naturally, in such a small work the brushstrokes are minute, and these are often applied with a soft stippling technique. Although the palette is generally natural and subdued, an interesting exception is the use of red for shadows. A long red line marks the juncture of the head and wig, for instance, and red is also used to model the eyelids and sockets, the pronounced crease between nose and mouth, the nostril, the lips, and the double chin. This artifice lends both warmth to the complexion and vigor to the modeling. 

William Kloss

Excerpted from Jonathan L. Fairbanks. Becoming a Nation: Americana from the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State. New York: Rizzoli, 2003.