John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) was the foremost portrait painter in Boston in the 1760s, and is today the best-known colonial American portrait artist.

The Nova Scotia Museum collection includes two Copley portraits, both painted about 1762, depicting Michael and Susanna Francklin. At the time, Copley was about 24 years old, Michael about 29 amd Susanna about 21.

Portraits by J.S. Copley with Canadian histories are very rare and the existence of a pair of portraits is very unusual. There is only one other pair of Copley portraits with Canadian history in a public collection: Jonathan and Abigail Belcher, now at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick.