Copley was born in Boston in 1738 into a poor family but through his self-taught talent, industrious work ethic and ambition rose to move in Boston’s highest social circles. Mary Woodward, an art historian and HSOY Trustee who currently works with Historic New England as an interpreter, will explain how Copley accomplished this transition to become the preferred choice of rebels and royalists alike who wanted their likenesses captured for posterity, and is today recognized as the finest portrait painter in Colonial America.