John Singleton Copley was described by family members as a quiet and retiring man possessing great powers of concentration. He was consumed with the idea of perfecting his art. He was also characterized as a tender and thoughtful man, one who supported a sizable family through his art commissions. Copley's contemporaries noted that his artistic success was achieved through great personal sacrifice and long hours of work.

"A stunning biography…[A] truly singular account of the American Revolution." —Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire Through an intimate narrative of the life of painter John Singleton Copley, award-winning historian Jane Kamensky reveals the world of the American Revolution, rife with divided loyalties and tangled sympathies. Famed today for his portraits of patriot leaders like Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, Copley is celebrated as one of America’s founding artists. But, married to the daughter of a tea merchant and seeking artistic approval from abroad, he could not sever his own ties with Great Britain. Rather, ambition took him to London just as the war began. His view from abroad as rich and fascinating as his harrowing experiences of patriotism in Boston, Copley’s refusal to choose sides cost him dearly. Yet to this day, his towering artistic legacy remains shared by America and Britain alike.

Freedom of speech was restricted during the Revolutionary War. In the great struggle for independence, those who remained loyal to the British crown were persecuted with loss of employment, eviction from their homes, heavy taxation, confiscation of property and imprisonment. Loyalist Americans from all walks of life were branded as traitors and enemies of the people. By the end of the war, 80,000 had fled their homeland to face a dismal exile from which few would return, outcasts of a new republic based on democratic values of liberty, equality and justice.

First published in 1997. For this second edition of Art Books: A Basic Bibliography of Monographs on Artists, the vast number of new books published since 1985 was surveyed and evaluated. This has resulted in the selection of 3,395 additional titles. These selections, reflective of the increase in the monographic literature on artists during the last ten years, are evidence of the activities of a larger number of art historians in more countries worldwide, of the increasingly diverse and ambitious exhibition programs of museums whose number has also increased dramatically, and also of a lively international art market and the attendant gallery activities. The selections of the first edition have been reviewed, errors have been corrected and important new editions and reprints have been noted. The second edition contains 278 names of artists not represented in the first edition.

Barbara Novak is one of America's premier art historians, the author of the seminal books American Painting of the Nineteenth Century and Nature and Culture, the latter of which was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, with Voyages of the Self, this esteemed critic completes the trilogy begun with the two earlier works, offering once again an exhilarating exploration of American art and culture. In this book, Novak explores several inspired pairings of key writers and painters, drawing insightful parallels between such masters as John Singleton Copley and Jonathan Edwards, Winslow Homer and William James, Frederic Edwin Church and Walt Whitman, and Jackson Pollock and Charles Olson. Through these and other groupings, Novak tracks the varied meanings of the self in America, in which the most salient characteristics of each artist or writer is shown to draw from--and in turn influence--the larger map of American life. Two major threads weaving through the book are the American preoccupation with the "object" and our continuing return to pragmatism. Novak notes for instance how Copley's art mirrors the puritan denial of self found in Jonathan Edwards and how as colonial scientists they share an interest in sensation and observation. She sees Winslow Homer and William James as practitioners of a pragmatic self grounded in an immediate experience that looks for concrete results. Through such fruitful comparisons--whether between Copley and Edwards, or Lane and Emerson, or Ryder and Dickinson--Novak sheds unmatched light on our nation's artistic heritage. Wonderfully illustrated with dozens of black-and-white pictures and sixteen full-color plates, here is a stunning work that yields a wealth of insight into American art and culture--and concludes Novak's landmark trilogy.