A Boy with a Flying Squirrel (Henry Pelham)

In 1765 John Singleton Copley was the finest painter in Boston, which in the eyes of London meant a talented provincial nobody had heard of. He painted his young half-brother, Henry Pelham, leaning at a table with a pet flying squirrel on a gold chain, and shipped the picture across the Atlantic to be shown in London the next year. There it reached Joshua Reynolds, Britain's leading portraitist, who called it a very wonderful performance and said Copley could become one of the first painters in the world, if only he left Boston before his manner was fixed. Copley kept working the polished surfaces the London crowd found slightly too hard, like the water glass that reflects the boy's fingers.