# John Copley artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/john-copley/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T18:28:44.486Z
Quality: medium confidence, adequate sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1738-07-03
- Death date: 1815-09-09
- Nationality: American, British
- Movements: Colonial American portraiture, British portrait and history painting
- Common media: Painting

## Portrait

![John Copley](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Self_portrait_of_John_Singleton_Copley.jpg)
John Singleton Copley · Public domain
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Self_portrait_of_John_Singleton_Copley.jpg

## About John Copley

John Copley is the shortened auction and search form used here for John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), an American-born British painter. He established his reputation through portraits of affluent sitters in colonial New England before moving to London in 1774. There he continued portrait work and produced large history paintings, including treatments of contemporary events and figures in modern dress. Collectors therefore encounter his name across two connected contexts: colonial American portraiture and later British portrait and history painting. The distinction matters because the short name “John Copley” can be ambiguous in databases, while authority records identify this artist under his full name. This page uses the full-name identity for entity matching while preserving Appraisily's public display name. Sources in the collected pack chiefly document paintings, especially portraits, together with the large history subjects associated with his London career. Any individual object still requires work-level attribution and evidence.

## Common works and media

Public identity sources characterize Copley as a painter. The documented body of work centers on portraits—first associated with colonial New England sitters and later with London patrons—and on large history paintings made after his move to Britain. This pack does not establish prints, editions, sculptures, ceramics, drawings, or posters as common auction forms, so those categories should not be inferred from the artist name alone.

## Market and appraisal context

Market review should begin by confirming that a record refers to John Singleton Copley, not merely to a creator indexed as “John Copley.” Comparable selection should then separate colonial New England portraits from London-period portraits and history paintings, since the source pack documents different subjects and career contexts. The supplied Appraisily page indicates an auction-record corpus, but this research pack contains no fetched major-auction-house cataloguing, work-level provenance, condition reports, or verified price trend. Accordingly, this profile does not predict value or rank demand. Appraisal should examine the specific object's attribution, date, subject, materials, documentation, and physical state, then compare it with public lots whose cataloguing, sale dates, and realized prices are available.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist-identity research with auction records and, when available, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots. This source pack establishes Copley's identity and broad artistic context more strongly than work-level market evidence.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q316016
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/66552740/
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500009177
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singleton_Copley
- Wikipedia: https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singleton_Copley
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/john-copley/
- Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Self_portrait_of_John_Singleton_Copley.jpg