James Warren 1763

John Singleton Copley painted James Warren, likely in Boston, sometime before the American Revolution. Copley was the pre-eminent portraitist in the colonies, and Warren a prominent merchant and political figure. Warren’s dress and bearing display his wealth and status: the expensive cloth, the powdered wig, and the walking stick signify a man of leisure. The setting, with its classical architecture, gestures toward Enlightenment ideals of civic virtue. But consider the politics of such images. They served to reinforce a social hierarchy in which only men such as Warren had the power to commission their own likeness. Warren was deeply involved in organizing resistance to British taxation, serving as president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. If we look at the correspondence of the time, or the publications that issued from that Congress, we can see how the outward markers of social status could also come to represent a commitment to revolutionary principles. Historians examine these artifacts to understand the complex relationship between art, power, and social change.