Franklin C. Cacciutto
Samuel Adams
(1770-72)
The Poetics of Terrorism
:Level One:
The first fact of this painting is the bright red of Samuel Adams’ coat. It is what a class is most likely to respond to when asked what about this portrait strikes them first or first catches their eye. From this striking fact as long a list as possible of other facts should follow. I believe very strongly that this is the proper primary level of study of this painting, and that copies of the American Dictionary of Biography entry for “Samuel Adams’’ should be withheld until Level Four. There are two likely points of transition from the listing of facts to Level Two, or generalizations about the relationships among the facts listed in the first level. These are either the roll shapes which cascade like a wave across the baroque diagonal of the painting, from the classical columns to the waves of his hair, to the cylinders of his body and arms, to the rolled document he holds like a club in his fist and the rolled document that is the foreground of the painting, and to which he points; or, as an alternative into metaphor, the question of his body structure, or posture, in his pose, as he is represented as arching with such twisting violence that his body seems to disjoint between waist and hips.
Level Two:
The contrasts between this painting and
Epes Sargent
, previously studied, are instructive, and make a unifying vehicle for an analysis of the composition of
Samuel Adams
. Here the classical columns are dim and to the rear, and in contrast formally with the baroque, twisting spiral of the figure of Adams and with the rolled documents, like fallen columns, before him. The angry and passionate red of
Samuel Adams
contrasts with the serene, silvery blue-grey of
Epes Sargent
. The difference is mood between these paintings is highly palpable, and represents a difference in styles that is significant of a difference in historic moments, between the successfulness of colonial America shadowed by transience, and the volcano of the revolutionary America which casts that shadow.
A detail of Copley’s rendering of his subject’s face is imperative here. The violence of Adams’ protest is such that the vertical line of the nose and mouth and the horizontal line of the eyes are not perpendicular; they are skewed, the angle between the near eye and the starkly lit nose and mouth opening obtusely, explosively.
Level Three:
This is a portrait of a frightening, forceful man, a man who commands with the beatitude of one ready to fight and die for his beliefs; indeed, the target he presents (and the historic moment of confrontation with the crown here immortalized) suggests an avidity to do so. His physical disunities and distortions suggest that Copley saw him as a dangerous, perhaps even as a deranged, man. This is both a fair and an appropriate place to treat of Copley’s own predicament politically and of his expatriation. He seems to have been fully aware of the ironies of this commission.
Level Four:
Compare and contrast this image of Samuel Adams to those of modern revolutionaries and terrorists.
Level Five:
Again, a comparison and contrasts between this portrait and
Epes Sargent
, here with a view to which of these two portraits, as representative of styles of being human, the student finds most appealing, seems expedient.