Copley, John Singleton. Samuel Adams.

(ca.) The portrait depicts Adams pointing to the Massachusetts Provincial Charter and holding a rolled-up copy of the “instructions of the Town of Boston to Its Representatives, which he had drafted in 1764 and 1765. According to Jane Kamensky, “If . . . as some scholars have alleged, a history painting in the guise of a portrait, it depicts a stream of time: a movement, not a moment.” The painting is today owned by the Museum of Fine Arts.