Copley Square

This guide to Copley Square in Boston traces the life of the painter it's named for, John Singleton Copley, who taught himself to paint in his stepfather's engraving studio and became the city's most sought-after portraitist by his twenties. It follows his fall under suspicion when the Boston Tea Party implicated his father-in-law and his wife's Loyalist family, and the 1774 voyage he told friends was only a tour of Europe. Look up at the two grand buildings framing the square, Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library, said to argue with each other in stone.