West, Copley, and the Camera Obscura

Abstract

The camera obscura projects the reflection of a landscape or object onto a flat surface from which it can be traced or studied. Although the camera obscura was a popular instrument for viewing nature during the late eighteenth century, little documentation of its use by individual artists exists. Two notable exceptions to this silence on the subject of the camera are found in eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century written comments about or by American artists Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley. West described his use of the camera through his biography by Scottish writer John Galt, and examination of a group of his landscape drawings suggests he used the camera for tracing. In a letter to his brother, Copley advised the use of the camera for the study of light, shade, and color, evidence of which may be seen in his painting The Ascension of 1774. A close look at West's and Copley's use of the camera obscura allows us to more closely examine artistic practices of the late eighteenth century and reveals how varied and pervasive use of the camera really was, both for linear depictions and for the rendering of color and shadow.