Study for "The Death of Major Peirson": Two Dead Figures 1782 - 1783

John Singleton Copley sketched "Study for 'The Death of Major Peirson': Two Dead Figures" in preparation for his history painting that depicts the 1781 British victory over French forces on the island of Jersey. Here, Copley meticulously plans for the gruesome realities of battle, depicting two lifeless bodies sprawled across the ground. But beyond the military bravado, what does it mean to immortalize death in the name of empire? Copley, an American expatriate in London, navigated the complex politics of revolution and representation. In his large painting, Peirson is idealized as a fallen hero; Copley skillfully avoids the true, brutal horror of war. He places a Black soldier in a prominent position, a common trope in art of this era, and uses him as a signifier of British values of liberty, even as Black people were enslaved across the British Empire. Copley’s sketch hints at the human cost of conflict and prompts us to consider whose stories are told and whose are erased in the grand narratives of history.