Copley began his career as a gallery owner specializing in Surrealism before taking up art himself, moving to Paris in the early 1950s. After his return to New York in the mid-1960s, he developed his distinctive style: a narrative style with curved forms and contours reminiscent of comic book drawings, intense colors, a spatiality arranged on the surface, as well as recurring motifs and mostly faceless round figures (in some ways anticipating Haring's figures). All this sets him apart from the abstract trends of the time. Copley increasingly drew on American folk myths and ballads, translating them into his distinctive artistic language, creating a dense narrative and richly patterned visual world. A review of his exhibition at the time aptly described Copley as “Vuillard à la Wild West” (Washington Post, April 4, 1967, quoted from: Exhibition catalog William N. Copley, Fondazione Prada, Milan, 2016, p. 144).
In “My Mother Was a Lady – Like Yours, You Will Allow,” the artist translates the song of the same name (1863, also “If Jack Were Only Here”) by E. B. Marks (lyrics) and J. W. Stern (music) into his painting. The ballad tells the story of a young waitress who serves two drummers and is showered with salacious remarks. She turns to the guests in tears with the words, “My mother was a lady, and yours, I would allow,” and urges them to consider whether they, too, might have a sister who could now need protection. She says she only came to the city to find her brother. One of the guests knows her brother well; one is so deeply impressed by her words that he asks for her hand in marriage, making it a story of the integrity of single women in a harsh, male-dominated society. It is also an archetype of American female values, which put family first. Although Copley is best known for his frivolous depictions, the present work reveals a socio-critical component that, despite its playful painterly style, is the complete opposite of his later works and their sense of lightness and frivolity. [EH]