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Moses Myers House

The home of the first permanent Jewish residents of Norfolk, this historic house offers a glimpse of the life of a wealthy early 19th-century merchant family.
More about the house

Jean Outland Chrysler Library

With an extensive collection of more than 106,000 rare and unique volumes relating to the history of art, the Jean Outland Chrysler Library is one of the most significant art libraries in the South. More about the Library

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Visit one of the most significant art libraries in the South. More about the library

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Further your career and join us in Norfolk.
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Help ensure the long-term success of the Museum.
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Historic Houses

Located on Freemason St. —

Open Saturday and Sunday

Noon–5 p.m.

Jean Outland Chrysler Library

By Appointment

Tuesday-Thursday

10:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.

Moses Myers House

The oldest Jewish home in America open to the public as a museum offers a glimpse of the life of an early 19th century merchant family.
More about the house

About the Library

With an extensive collection of more than 106,000 rare and unique volumes relating to the history of art, the Jean Outland Chrysler Art Library is one of the most significant art libraries in the South. More about the library

Willoughby-Baylor House

Completed in 1794, this former home now presents a mix of art and artifacts. See what's on view

Located in Norfolk

One Memorial Place,
Norfolk, VA
Get Directions

While You're Here

Visit our Museum Shop
and the Wisteria Cafe.

Perry Glass Studio

A state-of-art facility on the Museum’s campus. See a free glassmaking demo Tuesdays–Sunday at noon. Like what you see? Take a class with us! More about the Studio

Moses Myers House

The home of the first permanent Jewish residents of Norfolk, this historic house offers a glimpse of the life of a wealthy early 19th-century merchant family.
More about the house

Jean Outland Chrysler Library

With an extensive collection of more than 106,000 rare and unique volumes relating to the history of art, the Jean Outland Chrysler Library is one of the most significant art libraries in the South. More about the Library

Weddings & Event Rentals

The perfect place for your big day or special event. Get the details

Take a tour

We offer a number of tours on different topics. More about tours

Jean Outland Chrysler Library

Visit one of the most significant art libraries in the South. More about the library

About the Chrysler

Our story spans well over 100 years. See where we began, how we grew, and where we're going. Explore our history

News and Announcements

See what's happening at the Museum, read Chrysler Magazine, and find our Media Center. Read now

Location

745 Duke Street
Norfolk, VA 23510
757-333-6299

Always Free Parking

Get Directions

Third Thursdays

Live art performances monthly.
See the archive

Studio Team

Meet the brilliant minds behind the Studio.
See the team

Studio Assistantship Program

Further your career and join us in Norfolk.
Find out more

The Masterpiece Society

Learn about this innovative group of museum supporters.
Meet the Masterpiece Society

Planned Giving

Help ensure the long-term success of the Museum.
Learn about planned giving

Collections Menu
Miles Sherbrook

Miles Sherbrook

Artist: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738 - 1815)
Date: 1771
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
49 1/2 x 39 in. (125.7 x 99.1 cm)
Overall, Frame: 56 x 46 in. (142.2 x 116.8 cm)
Classification: American art
Credit Line: Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., in memory of his grandparents Anna-Maria Breymann and Henry Chrysler
Object number: 80.219
Terms
  • Interior
  • Man
  • Letter
  • Brown
  • Dark Brown
  • Flesh
  • New York
In Collection(s)
On view
DescriptionAn oil on canvas portrait of Miles Sherbrook, a merchant who sympathized with the British side during the American War of Independence. He is shown in the Chrysler painting seated and holding a letter; portrayed without a wig and dressed simply, Sherbrook appears unpretentious and forthright. Sherbrook sits in a New York rococo side chair and works at a covered card table.

Exhibition History"Recent Acquisitions of American Art, 1769-1938," Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, March 3 - 31, 1979. (Exh. cat. no. 4)
"John Singleton Copley in America," Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass., June 7 - Aug. 27, 1995; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y., September 26, 1995 - January 7, 1996; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tex., February 4 - April 28, 1996; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wis., May 22 - August 25, 1996. (Exh. cat. no. 72)
"America's First Old Master: Portraits by John Singleton Copley, from The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston," Chrysler Museum of Art, Small Changing Gallery, Norfolk, Va., May 18 - August 15, 2004.
"Reopening of the Joan P. Brock Galleries," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., Opening in March of 2008.
"American Treasures at the Willoughby-Baylor House," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, January 2 - December 1, 2013.
“Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of US-American Art,” Wallraf-Richartz Museum and Foundation, Cologne, Germany, November 23, 2018 – March 24, 2019.
Label textJohn Singleton Copley
American, 1738–1815
Miles Sherbrook, 1771
Oil on canvas

No great American art museum collection would be complete without a key work by the renowned early Boston portraitist, John Singleton Copley. Walter Chrysler acquired Miles Sherbrook in 1979 and gave it to the Museum in honor of his grandparents. Here, Copley painted merchant Miles Sherbrook with a letter and quill in hand, attributes of a diligent and earnest man of commerce. By presenting the wealthy New Yorker without a wig and by including the scars on his cheeks, this intimate portrait communicates the sitter’s character and values rather than his social status. Both Sherbrook and Copley feared the financial consequences of the American Revolution. While the businessman lost his fortune during the war, America’s leading portrait painter relocated to London, ensuring a steady supply of patrons.

Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., in memory of his grandparents Anna-Maria Breymann and Henry Chrysler 80.219
Published References _Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, 1739-1776_ (1914; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 112-115, 127-128. Frank W. Bayley, _The Life and Works of John Singleton Copley_ (Boston: The Taylor Press, 1915), 21-22. Barbara Neville Parker and Anne Bolling Wheeler, _John Singleton Copley: American Portraits in Oil, Pastel, and Miniature_ (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1938), 267. Jules David Prown, _John Singleton Copley_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), 1: 229. _Recent Acquisitions of American Art, 1769-1938_, exh. cat., Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, 1979, no. 4. Thomas W. Styron, "New Acquisitions Featured," _Chrysler Museum Bulletin_ 10 (Dec. 1980): 2. Thomas W. Styron, "Copley Gifts," _Chrysler Museum Bulletin_ 11 (Jan. 1981): 4. Jim Spencer, "Long Lost Portrait at Home in Norfolk," _Virginian-Pilot_, March 28, 1981. "La Chronique des Arts: Principales Acquisitions des Musées en 1981," _Gazette des Beaux Arts_ 99 (Mar. 1982): 50. _The Chrysler Museum: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Norfolk, Virginia_, (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum, 1982), 76-77. ISBN: 0940744376 Jules David Prown, "John Singleton Copley in New York," _The Walpole Society Notebook_ (1986): 31. Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_ (Norfolk, 1991), 78-79, no. 59. ISBN: 0940744597, 0940744627 Carrie Rebora and Paul Staiti, et al., _John Singleton Copley in America_ (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 55, 303-305. ISBN: 0870997440, 0870997459, 0810964929 Jules David Prown, _Art as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 26, 29. ISBN: 0300084315 Luke Beckerdite, ed., _American Furniture_ (Hanover, Conn.: Chipstone Foundation, 2004), 178-179, fig. 36. ISBN: 0-9724353-4-4 Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 20-21, no. 1. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6 Jeff Harrison, _Collecting with Vision: Treasures From the Chrysler Museum of Art_ (London: D. Giles Ltd., 2007), 59, fig. 58. ISBN: 978-0-940744-72-1 Barbara Schaefer and Anita Hachmann, editors. _Es War Einmal in Amerika: 300 Jahre US-Amerikanische Kunst_. (Köln: Wienand Verlag, 2018) no. 15, pg. 298.
Provenance England, after the American Revolution or around 1815; Herrick family, Beaumanor Park, Leicestershire, England, 1977; Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, 1979; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.; Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to the Chrysler Museum in memory of his grandparents, Anna-Maria Breymann and Henry Chrysler, 1980.
Catalogue EntryJohn Singleton Copley
Boston, Mass. 1738-1815 London, England
Portrait of Miles Sherbrook, 1771
Oil on canvas, 49 1/2 × 39 in. (125.7 × 99 cm)
Dated on the letter the sitter holds: 1771
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., in Memory of his Grandparents, Anna-Maria Breymann and Henry Chrysler, 80.219

References: Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley, Cambridge, 1966, I, p. 229; idem, "John Singleton Copley in New York," The Walpole Society Note Book, 1987, p. 31; Carrie Rebora, Paul Staiti et al., John Singleton Copley in America, exhib. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Milwaukee Art Museum, 1995-96, no. 72.

During the two decades preceding the American Revolution, the portraitist John Singleton Copley emerged in Boston as the most distinguished of colonial artists. His many portraits of influential New Englanders-merchants, clergymen, lawyers-were remarkable for their craftsmanlike polish and clarity of design. Their excellence captured the attention of Benjamin West (see object 71.720) and other artists in London, where Copley began to exhibit in 1766. The lure of London and the Continent eventually proved irresistible for Copley. In 1774 he embarked on a European tour and the next year settled in London. He remained there for the rest of his life, building a second, European career on the strength of his portraits of the British aristocracy and his ambitious figurative paintings of historical and religious content.
Copley spent most of his early, American period working in Boston. In 1771, however, he briefly interrupted his Boston practice with a seven-month visit to New York. The trip was prompted in part by an invitation from a New York resident, Stephen Kemble. In April of 1771 Kemble wrote to Copley that he had secured the names of several influential New Yorkers who would sit for him if he came to that city. Among the subscribers Kemble listed was the merchant Miles Sherbrook, who agreed to have his likeness painted in Copley's standard half-length format of fifty by forty inches, at a price of twenty guineas. The result was the imposing Portrait of Miles Sherbrook in the Chrysler Museum of Art.
Many of Copley's New York patrons were British loyalists, Tories who sided with England during the American War of Independence. One such loyalist was Sherbrook. Born in Britain, he immigrated to the colonies and during the late 1760s achieved prominence in New York business circles as a partner in the London-based import firm of Perry, Hayes, and Sherbrook. Having condemned him for his royalist sympathies during the Revolutionary War, the New York legislature voted in 1779 to seize his property and banish him from the state. In 1787 he was allowed to return, though he never recouped his fortune. In 1805 he died a widower in Westchester County, New York.
Copley's portrait of Sherbrook appeared in England at some point after the Revolution-possibly after Sherbrook's death. Scholars lost sight of the painting during the nineteenth century, and it was presumed to have vanished for good. It was rediscovered in England only in 1977 and was acquired by the Museum three years later.
The portrait shows Sherbrook seated at a table, dealing with his affairs. A handsome man in the fullness of middle age, he is portrayed without a wig and is dressed simply, in business clothes: russet breeches, waistcoat (a kind of vest), and frock coat, all of which glow warmly in the light entering the picture from the left. His cheek is scarred with pockmarks, possibly from a bout of smallpox. They give a weathered quality to Sherbrook that seems to underscore our impression of him as an unpretentious, forthright businessman.
Copley typically provided his male sitters with attributes that signified their vocations. Sherbrook holds a letter and quill pen, objects the artist used in several other portraits to indicate the mercantile profession. The eloquent simplicity of the painting and its extraordinarily incisive presentation of character are the marks of Copley's best portraits of the late 1760s and early 1770s, a period when he began to place his subjects in darker, more neutral settings and make dramatic use of chiaroscuro to spotlight their faces and hands. In portraits like Miles Sherbrook, Copley advanced beyond the rococo extravagances of earlier European portraiture to create images that captured the simple strength and moral idealism of the emerging American republic.
JCH

Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 20-21, no. 1.