Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
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Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-singleton-copley-113" aria-label="More by John Singleton Copley" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">John Singleton Copley</a>
Death Earl Chatham
Presented by the Earl of Liverpool 1830
actions: expressive
adults
aristocrat
Chatham, William Pitt, 1st Earl of
collapse
death: William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, 1778
diseases and conditions
dress: ceremonial/royal
England
group
groups
groups
history
interiors
man
named individuals
parliament
peers’ robes
people
places
politician - non-specific
politician, prime minister
politics and society
portraits
public and municipal
public service
royalty and social rank
society
supporting
UK countries and regions
UK London
Westminster, Houses of Parliament
work and occupations
<p><span>The Death of the Earl of Chatham </span>is a monumental oil painting made in 1779–81 by the Anglo-American artist John Singleton Copley. It depicts a large crowd of men, most of whom wear crimson parliamentary robes, looking towards the collapsed figure of William Pitt the Elder, the First Earl of Chatham, at the centre-right. Illuminated by a theatrical shaft of light emanating from the top left of the composition, Chatham’s limp body falls backwards as his colleagues rush to support him. His skin is pale, his eyes roll back and, at his feet, a wooden crutch lies on the floor. The faces of the crowd express a range of reactions, from shock and concern to disinterest. Behind Chatham, two figures place their hands on a set of hanging tapestries illustrating the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. In the background, the velvet canopy of state, adorned with heraldry and other emblems of the monarchy, looms over the scene.</p>
painting oil paint canvas
11 August 2003
11 August 2003 – 23 February 2013
2013-02-23
2003-08-11
National Portrait Gallery (London, UK)
http://www.npg.org.uk
2003-08-11
Long Loan to the National Portrait Gallery
Loan-out
9 June 2015 – 13 September 2015
2015-09-13
9 June 2015 – 13 September 2015
2015-09-13
2015-06-09
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2015-06-09
Fighting History
Exhibition
The Death of the Earl of Chatham
support: 2286 × 3073 mm
Presented by the Earl of Liverpool 1830
<div><p><i>The Death of the Earl of Chatham </i><span>is a monumental oil painting made in 1779–81 by the Anglo-American artist John Singleton Copley. It depicts a large crowd of men, most of whom wear crimson parliamentary robes, looking towards the collapsed figure of William Pitt the Elder, the First Earl of Chatham, at the centre-right. Illuminated by a theatrical shaft of light emanating from the top left of the composition, Chatham’s limp body falls backwards as his colleagues rush to support him. His skin is pale, his eyes roll back and, at his feet, a wooden crutch lies on the floor. The faces of the crowd express a range of reactions, from shock and concern to disinterest. Behind Chatham, two figures place their hands on a set of hanging tapestries illustrating the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. In the background, the velvet canopy of state, adorned with heraldry and other emblems of the monarchy, looms over the scene.</span></p><p><span>The painting refers to an event that took place in the British House of Lords in Westminster, London. On 7 April 1778 – nearly three years after tensions between Great Britain and its American colonies had devolved into a state of war – the House of Lords debated a resolution to withdraw their troops from the colonies, an act that would have effectively ended the conflict and granted American independence. Chatham, an elder statesman, had presided over the British Cabinet during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), a conflict that saw a dramatic expansion of Britain’s colonial territory in North America. Although Chatham was sympathetic to the grievances of the American colonists, he was a firm opponent of independence, declaring to the Lords that if ‘American independence was allowed by Parliament, then England’s sun was set … The same spirit might soon pervade both the Indies; it might catch Ireland, and at length reduce the empire to the small island of Britain’ (quoted in Kamensky 2016, p.295). After delivering this impassioned speech, Chatham suddenly fell unconscious, dying a month later.</span></p><p><span>Chatham’s dramatic collapse and death spawned an outpouring of sympathy and, by December 1778, the Aldermen of the City of London sought a painter to commemorate his memory. Drawing upon the work of Benjamin West, the leading history painter of the day (whose </span><i>Death of General Wolfe</i><span> was exhibited to widespread acclaim in 1771), Copley began drafting what would become </span><i>The Death of the Earl of Chatham</i><span>. He devoted much of 1779 to the painting, arranging sittings with dozens of peers and recording their likenesses in a series of chalk drawings. Copley would portray fifty-five named individuals in the picture, including many of late-eighteenth-century Britain’s most eminent politicians: Lord Mansfield, known for his judgement in the 1772 </span><i>Somerset </i><span>case, sits at the table on the left, and future Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger – then only a teenager – throws his palms up in distress beside his moribund father. Copley’s portrait and figure studies in dry media survive in many institutions across Britain and the US, as do three sketches in oil paint, two of which are in Tate’s collection (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/copley-study-for-the-death-of-the-earl-of-chatham-n01072" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01072</span></a> and <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/copley-study-for-the-death-of-the-earl-of-chatham-n01073" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01073</span></a>).</span></p><p><span>The Aldermen had a change of heart in December 1779, deciding instead to commission the sculptor John Bacon to produce a monument to memorialise Chatham (Guildhall, London). Undeterred, Copley continued to work on </span><i>The Death of the Earl of Chatham</i><span>, financing his operation by soliciting subscriptions for an engraving, and, when the painting was finished in April 1781, by charging admission to see the picture as a standalone exhibit in the Great Room at Spring Gardens, London. Copley’s overt commercialism attracted criticism, notably from members of the Royal Academy (of which Copley had only recently been made a member), who considered the exhibit to be a direct challenge to their annual exhibition at Somerset House. Regardless, Copley’s attraction became a sensation. The crowds were documented in an engraving after a sketch by Daniel Dodd (see Angus Williams, </span><i>The Death of Lord Chatham in the House of Peers </i><span>1781, British Museum, London), which depicts mesmerised visitors standing before the picture. One man is shown reading an illustrated key identifying each of the figures on the left-hand side of the composition, one of several such diagrams created to enhance the viewing of the painting and its subsequent engravings.</span></p><p><span>After news of the decisive American victory over British forces at Yorktown, Virginia, reached London in November 1781, Chatham’s final speech and collapse could hardly have been regarded as the heroic last act of a tireless political leader, but prophetic of Britain’s imminent loss of the very colonies Chatham had died attempting to preserve. The painting’s awkward political implications were likely exacerbated by Copley’s American origins, which some contemporaries publicly derided. Other factors complicated the reception of the picture further; it took a decade for the engraving by Francesco Bartolozzi – which Copley had promised his subscribers – to finally materialise in 1791, after which the image had lost much of its contemporary appeal. Copley was, moreover, unable to find a buyer for the painting, eventually disposing of it by raffle in 1806 (the lucky ticket belonged to London merchant Alexander Davison). Nevertheless, </span><i>The Death of the Earl of Chatham – </i><span>the largest and most ambitious painting Copley had produced to date </span><i>– </i><span>confirmed the artist’s status as an eminent history painter following the acclaim of his breakthrough work </span><i>Watson and the Shark</i><span> in 1778 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). With his fame in the genre secured, Copley went on to complete </span><i>The Death of Major Peirson</i><span> in 1784 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/copley-the-death-of-major-peirson-n00733" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00733</span></a>) and continued to advance his ambitions as a painter of monumental historical pictures throughout the remainder of his career.</span></p><p><b>Further reading</b></p><p><span>Jules Prown, </span><i>John Singleton Copley, Vol. 2: In England 1774–1815</i><span>, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1966, pp.275–91, reproduced as figs.392–8.</span></p><p><span>Jane Kamensky, </span><i>A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley</i><span>, New York 2016, pp.295–316, reproduced p.306 and as pl.15.</span></p><p><span>Alan Staley, </span><i>Copley and West in England, 1775–1815</i><span>, London 2021, pp.67–76, reproduced pp.68–70.</span></p><p><span>Adam Chen</span></p><p><span>April 2024</span></p></div>
Summary
2024-05-31T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
actions: expressive adults aristocrat Chatham, William Pitt, 1st Earl of collapse death: William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, 1778 diseases and conditions dress: ceremonial/royal England group groups groups history interiors man named individuals parliament peers’ robes people places politician - non-specific politician, prime minister politics and society portraits public and municipal public service royalty and social rank society supporting UK countries and regions UK London Westminster, Houses of Parliament work and occupations