John Singleton Copley was a redcoat loyalist who loved to paint Founding Fathers and other important Americans.

The depicted John Quincy Adams was an American Renaissance Man. By the time he turned seventeen, he had already traveled with his father, John Adams (the second President), to France, Spain, England, Germany, Russia, and Sweden. He possessed the highest IQ of any President in United States history, graduating with honors from Harvard and then studying law at Middlebury. After his studies, he began a prestigious career as the United States Minister for Netherlands, Russia, and England. Then he served as Secretary of State before he became the sixth President of the United States in 1825.

At the time of this portrait, John Quincy Adams was only twenty eight and already serving as the United States Minister for the Netherlands. His mother Abigail Adams became friends with John Singleton Copley’s wife, Susanna Copley, when the Adams family had visited London a decade prior. As a gift for Abigail, Susanna requested that her husband paint a portrait of John Quincy, who was conveniently living in London at the time. Abigail loved the portrait and wrote back to her son that “No present could have been more acceptable.” High praise from Abigail, and art critics agree. The piece is considered one of Copley’s best for the detailed brushwork on the face. Copley also did a portrait of John and Abigail’s daughter, named Abigail (talk about some creative naming going on at the Adams’ household). Unfortunately her portrait was lost in a house fire. I heard the painting received scorching reviews.

As a privileged prodigy and highly successful politician, John Quincy sat for sixty portraits throughout his life, an astonishing number when you consider each portrait requires multiple visits and hours and hours of time. Through all these sittings for all these portraits, John Quincy ultimately claimed toward the end of his life that only this portrait and two others were worth preserving. It’s hard to imagine being self-absorbed enough to get sixty portraits of yourself done and, on top of that, being critical enough to say that only three of the sixty were well done. And while John Quincy may have been cordial with Copley to his face, he had no problem talking smack on Copley behind his back. He did so via letters to his mother Abigail. In one such letter to his mother, he wrote of his morning sittings for Copley saying, “Conversation with him was political, metaphysical, and critical. His opinions not accurate, but well meaning.” Talk about pretentious vibes. But at the same time, I feel for John Quincy. How could he have known historians would read through his private letters to his mother and make them public? Personally, I enjoy a good old-fashioned gossip session with my mother as much as the next guy, and I respect John Quincy for keeping up the chitchat with his mom all the way across the Atlantic in the 1700s.

Copley and John Quincy would cross paths one last time, nineteen years later, when John Quincy came to London to discuss peace between the United States and the United Kingdom. The Copleys entertained John Quincy while he was there, but Susanna Copley wrote that her husband’s health seemed to suffer from his “cares and disappointments” during the visit. Copley would die three months later.