Biographies

John Copley (1875 – 1950)

The name is not uncommon, but this John Copley is not to be confused with the famous American painter of revolutionary times. This one was born in Manchester and studied art there at the Manchester School of Art, and then at the Royal Academy Schools. He also studied on the Continent and took up lithography in 1907 with considerable success. Ezra Pound, writing as B. H. Dias, called him an “inferior Picasso,” probably thinking of the way paintings like his “Tea Room” compared to some of Picasso’s cafe paintings . (NA 24.15:241)