Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
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
Purchased 1879
actions: expressive
adults
aristocrat
Chatham, William Pitt, 1st Earl of
collapse
compassion
death: William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, 1778
diseases and conditions
dress: ceremonial/royal
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
England
group
groups
history
interiors
man
named individuals
parliament
peers’ robes
people
places
politician - non-specific
politics and society
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>This picture and its related work (Tate N01072) are painted sketches made in c.1779 by the Anglo-American artist John Singleton Copley. The studies – rendered in a limited palette of brown, white and black oil paint – were created in preparation for Copley’s monumental history painting <span>The Death of the Earl of Chatham </span>(Tate N00100). They dramatise the collapse of William Pitt, the First Earl of Chatham, at the centre-right, while a crowd of peers in the House of Lords at Westminster, London, looks on. 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 who had presided over the British Cabinet during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), was sympathetic to the American cause but firmly opposed to this measure. After delivering an impassioned speech on the Floor of the House, Chatham suddenly fell unconscious, dying a month later.</p>
painting oil paint canvas
Study for ‘The Death of the Earl of Chatham’
support: 714 × 1045 mm
Purchased 1879
<div><p><span>This picture and its related work (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>)</span><span> </span><span>are painted sketches made in c.1779 by the Anglo-American artist John Singleton Copley. The studies – rendered in a limited palette of brown, white and black oil paint – were created in preparation for Copley’s monumental history painting </span><i>The Death of the Earl of Chatham </i><span>(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-the-earl-of-chatham-n00100" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00100</span></a>). They dramatise the collapse of William Pitt, the First Earl of Chatham, at the centre-right, while a crowd of peers in the House of Lords at Westminster, London, looks on. 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 who had presided over the British Cabinet during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), was sympathetic to the American cause but firmly opposed to this measure. After delivering an impassioned speech on the Floor of the House, Chatham suddenly fell unconscious, dying a month later.</span></p><p><span>Chatham’s dramatic collapse and death spawned an outpouring of sympathy for the statesman, and the Aldermen of the City of London sought a painter to commemorate his memory. By January 1779, they had accepted an initial design, probably on the basis of an oil sketch. Although the artist behind this design is unknown, it may have been the work of Benjamin West, whose credentials as a history painter were then far more established than Copley’s. West, whose 1770 picture </span><i>The Death of General Wolfe</i><span> (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) had pioneered a new type of painting dramatising the deaths of contemporary military and political figures, did produce a finished oil sketch (in colour) of Chatham’s collapse dated 1778 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven). A comment recorded in the 1780s by the writer and connoisseur Horace Walpole provides further insight: ‘Mr. West made a small Sketch of the Death of Lord Chatham, much better expressed &amp; disposed than Copley’s. It had none but the principal person’s [sic] present; Copley’s almost the whole peerage, of whom seldom are there at once, &amp; most are meer [sic] spectators, but the great merit of West is the principal figure which has his crutch &amp; gouty stockings which express his feebleness &amp; account for his death.’ According to Walpole, West never saw the project to completion so as ‘not to interfere with his friend Copley’. An 1829 sales catalogue describing West’s painting affirms this, noting that West ‘generously relinquished the object of his pursuit, and left the field open to his contemporary’ once he learned of Copley’s similar plans (Staley 2021, p.67; Helmut von Erffa and Alan Staley, </span><i>The Paintings of Benjamin West</i><span>, New Haven 1986, p.218).</span></p><p><span>The visual evidence suggests that Copley’s two oil sketches were not created independently of West’s version, however, but were at least partially derived from it. Two girandoles (ornamental candle holders) mounted to the wall on the right, for example, are present in both West’s painting and the two Tate sketches, but Copley ultimately abandoned them in his final picture. Moreover, West includes a figure reaching out to rest his hand on the tapestries commemorating England’s 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada that hang on that same wall, a distinctive motif replicated by Copley in the Tate sketches and the final painting. Two unsigned drawings tentatively attributed to Copley by art historian Jules Prown (held in the British Museum, London and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) depict the composition of West’s oil sketch, further suggesting Copley’s familiarity with his colleague’s version (Prown 1966, pp.280</span><i>–</i><span>1). Even after relinquishing the subject to Copley, West is known to have continued to exert an influence on the picture. The painter and diarist Joseph Farington recorded in 1806 that ‘[West] said when Copley had finished His picture of the death of Lord Chatham it was crude – it was under the eye of West that Copley harmonised it’ (quoted in Staley 2021, p.67). West’s comment to Farington may have been prompted by Copley’s perceived ingratitude; although West had encouraged Copley’s move to Britain in the 1770s and assisted him early in his London career, their relationship had become increasingly sour as Copley spearheaded a successful plot to oust West as President of the Royal Academy in 1805.</span></p><p><span>Although many of Copley’s portrait and figure sketches for </span><i>The Death of the Earl of Chatham </i><span>survive, only one other oil sketch is known (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). This work, also rendered in sepia tones, is signed and dated 1779. Its details are less refined than the two Tate sketches, but the composition more closely resembles the final painting and the surface is gridded, presumably for transfer to a larger canvas, indicating that it likely postdates the two Tate sketches. Subtle differences in all of the available sketches reveal the careful deliberation required to compose a contemporary history painting as complex and politically charged as </span><i>The Death of the Earl of Chatham</i><span>. Although the Aldermen of the City of London ultimately chose to commission a sculpture from the artist John Bacon to commemorate Chatham instead, Copley continued work on the painting until April 1781, when he displayed the completed picture as a standalone exhibit in the Great Room at Spring Gardens, London.</span></p><p><b>Further reading</b><br/><span>Jules Prown, </span><i>John Singleton Copley, Vol. 2: In England 1774-1815</i><span>, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1966, pp.275</span><i>–</i><span>91, reproduced as fig.403.</span><br/><span>Jane Kamensky, </span><i>A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley</i><span>, New York 2016, pp.295</span><i>–</i><span>316.</span><br/><span>Alan Staley, </span><i>Copley and West in England, 1775–1815</i><span>, London 2021, pp.67</span><i>–</i><span>76.</span></p><p><span>Adam Chen</span><br/><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 compassion death: William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, 1778 diseases and conditions dress: ceremonial/royal emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas England group groups history interiors man named individuals parliament peers’ robes people places politician - non-specific politics and society public and municipal public service royalty and social rank society supporting UK countries and regions UK London Westminster, Houses of Parliament work and occupations