Oil on canvas; 30.25 × 25 in (76.8 × 63.5 cm). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.
This is a portrait of Henry Pelham (1748/49—1806), Copley’s half-brother, who was eleven year younger than he. Though not as famous as his brother, Pelham was an artist, a miniaturist, engraver, and cartographer. He created an engraving of the Boston Massacre which Paul Revere copied and made famous.
One of the most stubborn myths of American history is the idea that the frontier promoted equality of material condition. This national folk legend is, unhappily, ver much mistaken. With some exceptions, landed wealth was always highly concentrated throughout the southern highlands, as it would be in the lower Mississippi Valley, Texas and the far southwest. Inequality was greater in the backcountry and the southern highlands than in any other rural region of the United States.