(jazz piano music)
- [First Narrator] We're in the Philadelphia Museum of Art
looking at a portrait
by the great colonial American painter, John Copley.
This is a portrait of Mr. And Mrs. Mifflin.
What interests me most about this portrait
is the way that we've lost some of the ability
to understand their place in society
and what this portrait meant.
- [Second Narrator] Just owning a portrait,
especially a life size portrait like this,
was a sign of your social position.
These were Quaker people who are discouraged
from showy displays of affluence
and yet here's an extremely expensive status symbol
in their living room.
- [First Narrator] The display isn't just
in the size of the portrait,
but also in what they're wearing.
I see a fabulous silk dress,
what looks like a fine woolen suit,
even the furniture looks sumptuous.
- [Second Narrator] But their choices are very restrained.
What this is telling you is that they're Quakers.
However, they're wealthy Quakers.
They can afford the very best.
This is an ostentatious statement of their plainness.
She is wearing a dress made of Chinese silk.
The most expensive fabric on the planet.
If you look at that apron,
this gauzy thing that looks like it was woven
by the fairies.
It's just fabulous.
You can't actually imagine wiping your hands on this apron.
It is exquisite.
So everything about her dress is expensive,
but very plain.
When Mr. and Mrs. Mifflin went to Boston
and had their portrait painted,
when they walked down the street
they would've turned heads for being plain.
Boston ladies wore a lot of lace.
Women of this class would've worn figured,
that is patterned silks,
and so the austerity of her dress
is quite special.
She's got no jewelry.
Instead she wears a flower
instead of pearls or silver.
He doesn't have silver buttons on his jacket.
- [First Narrator] We read so much about people
and their class from what they wear.
- [Second Narrator] When I ask people to guess
how old the people are,
they're actually much younger than you think.
They're 20 somethings
and the reason he looks older to us
is that he's powdered his hair,
but many men in a formal situation would've
been wearing a wig.
So he's again, choosing to be natural.
In the same way that she's wearing flowers
and not jewelry,
he's being very no nonsense and not pretentious
and just having a bit of powder on his hair.
- [First Narrator] Copley has this amazing ability
to turn paint into this variety of textures.
The gleam of the wood,
the reflection of the threads on the wooden table,
the gleam of her silk dress,
and at this point American colonists
were importing a lot of luxury goods from Britain.
- [Second Narrator] Her silk is definitely imported,
probably the fabric on the chair behind her
is imported from England.
So their houses are full of imported goods,
but the message of this painting actually is
make things at home.
Buy America first is the politics of this painting.
- [First Narrator] This does focus our attention
on Mrs. Mifflin and her work,
which does support this idea that this is about
colonists making things at home
instead of importing them.
And this is a politics that emerges after Britain
imposed taxes on the colonists, on tea famously.
And by refusing to import British goods,
they could exercise their power against Britain.
- [Second Narrator] And in fact,
the reason that they were in Boston
was to meet with John Hancock and other rabble-rousers
who were agitating about these import taxes.
- [First Narrator] So let's talk about what she's making.
It looks like fringe.
- [Second Narrator] It's upholstery fringe.
It's something she's doing to make her house beautiful
and so that's domestic production.
Although we don't have any letter from Mrs. Mifflin
saying I chose to be portrayed making something,
that's why they were in Boston.
He's a budding politician
and you have to think that
there's a message in this painting.
- [First Narrator] And one of his great causes
was this movement to not import and purchase British goods.
- [Second Narrator] So it's an argument
for domestic manufacturing,
very subtly done.
- [First Narrator] And Copley draws our attention
to her and her work in so many ways.
- [Second Narrator] She is spot-lit.
She's actually forward in the painting.
So she's a little bit in front
and her husband just fixes this adoring look on her
so that every time you look at him
he makes you look back at her.
It's a really unusual picture,
having the woman be the center of interest.
Copley stacks their hands up
so that they make a circle.
They almost touch even though in space
he would have been farther behind her.
It suggests their partnership in the loveliest way.
It's a fantastic painting of a marriage
because you see them as a team.
Copley himself was a Royalist,
a supporter of the King
and yet as a portrait artist and a business man
he had to take all comers
and he painted people of every political persuasion.
So these are people that he would not
have agreed with politically.
In the day you called them Whigs
and they would have been agitating for
the independence of the colonies.
- [First Narrator] And we're right at the time
of the Boston Tea Party,
of rebellions against the imperial government.
- [Second Narrator] In their living room
they had this big political statement
and maybe that took the edge off of the lavishness
of the portrait itself.
(jazz piano music)