WEST, BENJAMIN. 



WEST, BENJAMIN. 



650 



unlimited credib. He owed this to the generosity of two Philadelphia 

 merchants, Mr. Allon and Governor Hamilton. He now pursued the 

 plan recommended by Mengs ; and after he had examined all that was 

 worth studying in Florence, Bologna, Venice, and Parma, he returned 

 to Rome, and painted two pictures, which were well received ; one of 

 Cimon and Iphigenia, and one of Angelica and Medora. He was 

 elected a member by the academies of Florence, Bologna, and Parma. 



In 1763 West visited England on his way back to his own country; 

 and in London he had the good fortune to meet three of his best 

 friends, Messrs. Allen, Hamilton, and Dr. Smith, who had always taken 

 great interest in him. He soon made connections by the help of his 

 many friends, and the two pictures mentioned above, and a portrait of 

 General Monckton, second in command to Wolfe at Quebec, all of 

 which he exhibited in town, procured him a few commissions. He 

 painted the parting of ' Hector and Andromache ' for Dr. Newton, and 

 the ' Return of the Prodigal Son ' for the bishop of Worcester. Lord 

 llockingham offered him JQQl. per annum to decorate his mansion in 

 Yorkshire ; but this offer, by the advice of his friends, he declined. 

 His success was such as to induce him to remain in this country, and 

 having been long attached to Elizabeth Shewell, a young American 

 lady, he requested her to come over to him to England, which she 

 did, and they were married in 1765, at St. Martin' s-in-the-Fields. 



West's good fortune seemed to keep pace with his years. Dr. 

 Drummond, the archbishop of York, commissioned him to paint a 

 picture of Agrippina landing with the Ashes of Germanicus ; and the 

 prelate was so well pleased with the performance, that he attempted 

 to procure the painter an annuity by subscription, so as to enable him 

 to "desist from painting portraits and to confine himself to historical 

 subjects. He proposed to raise 3000Z., he and his friends subscribing 

 1500?. ; he however failed in the enterprise, but he praised both the 

 painter and the picture so highly to George III., that the king desired 

 he would send the young painter with his picture to him. West was 

 well received by the king, who presented him to the queen, and com- 

 missioned him to paint a picture for him of the Departure of Regulus 

 from Rome. This was the commencement of nearly forty years' 

 intimacy with George III. West's excellence as a painter however 

 was not the only source of his good fortune ; he was an excellent 

 skater, and acquired many acquaintances of rank through this accom- 

 plishment. When the Serpentine river in Hyde Park was frozen over, 

 a great circle of spectators was frequently seen to admire the young 

 American painter cutting the Philadelphia salute. 



-The picture of Regulus was exhibited in the first exhibition of the 

 Royal Academy, of which West was one of the principal members ; 

 he had previously been a member and director of the Society of 

 Artists, incorporated in 1765. But his 'Death of General Wolfe' was 

 the first work which caused much stir among artists. Instead of 

 representing his actors in Greek and Roman costumes, as was usual, 

 he very sensibly painted them in their own dresses ; an innovation 

 which Sir Joshua Reynolds had tried to dissuade him from. When 

 the picture was finished, according to Gait, " Reynolds seated himself 

 before the picture, examined it with deep and minute attention for 

 half an hour; then rising, said to Drummond, ' West has conquered 

 he has treated his subject as it ought to be treated I retract my 

 objections. I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the 

 most popular, but will occasion a revolution in art.' " West was now 

 thoroughly established both in the king's favour and in that of the 

 public, and he continued to produce in rapid succession a series 

 of large historical pictures, and there can be no question that the 

 great reputation he acquired was relatively well merited. Lord 

 Grosvenor purchased the picture of the 'Death of Wolfe,' and West 

 made a copy of it for the king. He painted also for the king, the 

 'Death of Epaminondas' as a companion to it; the 'Death of the 

 Chevalier Bayard ; ' ' Cyrus liberating the Family of the King of Ar- 

 menia ; ' and ' Segestus and his Daughter brought before Germauicus.' 

 He painted the following series of large historical works for George 

 III. at Windsor : Edward III. embracing the Black Prince, after the 

 battle of Cressy; the Installation of the Order of the Garter; the 

 Black Prince receiving the King of France and his Son prisoners at 

 Poictiers ; St. George killing the Dragon ; Queen Philippa defeating 

 David of Scotland in the battle of Neville's Cross; Philippa inter- 

 ceding with Edward for the Burgesses of Calais; Edward forcing 

 the passage of the Somme ; and Edward crowning Sir Eustace de 

 Ribaumont at Calais. 



After the completion of these works, West proposed to the king to 

 paint a great series upon the Progress of Revealed Religion ; but his 

 majesty, before consenting to this proposal, consulted some of the 

 dignitaries of the Church as to the propriety of introducing.paintings 

 into a place of worship : Bishop Kurd answered for himself and col- 

 leagues, and said that the introduction of religious paintings into his 

 majesty's chapel could in no respect violate the laws or usages of the 

 Church of England. Out of thirty-five subjects proposed by West, 

 all were approved of by the bishops : he afterwards added another to 

 the number. He divided the series into four dispensations, the Ante- 

 diluvian, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Prophetic. Half of the 

 subjects were from the Old Testament and half from the New. They 

 were all sketched, and twenty-eight of them were executed, for which 

 West received 21,705Z. He painted also in the meantime nine pictures 

 of portraits of the royal family, for which he received 2000 guineas. 



After the death of Reynolds, in 1792, West was unanimously elected 

 president of the Royal Academy, and the king sent the Duke of 

 Gloucester to him to inquire whether the honour of knighthood would 

 be acceptable to him, but West declined it; stating however at 

 the same time that with hia " hereditary descent and the station I 

 occupy among artists, a more permanent title might become a desirable 

 object " were he possessed of fortune, independent of his profession, 

 sufficient to enable his posterity to maintain the rank. In 1801, 

 during the illness of George III., West met with perhaps the first 

 reverse in his life : Mr. Wyatt, the royal architect, called upon him, 

 and told him that the pictures painting for the chapel at Windsor 

 must be suspended until further orders. Deeply affected he wrote a 

 letter to the king, which was carried to the court by Wyatt, but he 

 received no answer to it. When tha king recovered, West sought 

 and obtained a private audience, and he found that the king did not 

 know of the order to suspend the paintings, and that he had not 

 received any letter from him. He spoke very kindly to West, and 

 said, " Go on with your work, West; go on with the pictures; and I 

 shall take care of you." This was West's last interview with his early, 

 constant, and truly royal patron. "But he continued," says Gait, " to 

 execute the pictures, and in the usual quarterly payments received his 

 1000. per annum till his majesty's final superannuation ; when, with- 

 out any intimation whatever, on calling to receive it, he was told it 

 had been stopped, and that the paintings for the chapel, of Revealed 

 Religion, had been suspended. He submitted in silence he neither 

 remonstrated nor complained." During the thirty-three years which 

 West worked for George III., he received 34,1 87. from the king. This 

 sum was held up to the public by West's enemies, without any state- 

 ment of how it had been earned ; and although it is a large sum in 

 itself, yet when West's professional position and abilities, and his years 

 of toil for it, are considered, it makes but a poor income, and much 

 less than would satisfy any successful portrait-painter of that or the 

 present day. After the peace of Amiens West visited Paris, where 

 he was remarkably well received, to see the great collection of works 

 of art which Bonaparte had assembled in the Louvre. After hia 

 return he retired from the president's chair in the Academy owing to 

 a strong opposition among its members. Wyatt, the architect, was 

 put in his place, but in the following year, 1803, he was, with one 

 exception, unanimously restored to the chair. The dissenting voice 

 was supposed to be that of Fuseli, who voted for Mrs. Lloyd, an 

 academician, and when he was taxed by some of the members with 

 having given this vote, says Mr. Knowles, his biographer, he answered, 

 " Well, suppose I did ; she is eligible to the office and is not one old 

 woman as good as another ? " 



When West lost the patronage of the court, although sixty-four 

 years old, he commenced a series of great religious works on a larger 

 scale than any of those for George III. The first of this series was, 

 Christ Healing the Sick, which was purchased by the British Institu- 

 tion for 3000Z. and presented to the National Gallery. The picture 

 was painted as a present for an hospital established by the Quakers at 

 Philadelphia; but when it was sold, West sent them a copy of it with 

 some alterations in its stead. The copy was exhibited at Philadelphia, 

 and the profits of the exhibition enabled the committee of the hospital 

 to enlarge the building. 



The success of this piece induced West to continue even with 

 greater works. He painted a Crucifixion, sixteen feet by twenty -eight; 

 also an Ascension, and Inspiration of St. Peter, and a Descent of the 

 Holy Ghost on Christ at the Jordan, all of very large dimensions. In 

 1814 he exhibited a picture of Christ rejected by the Jewish High- 

 Priest, and in 1817 he exhibited his extraordinary picture of Death on 

 the Pale Horse, from the Revelations. Others of his large works are 

 the Brazen Serpent, in the possession of Mr. Neeld, and St. Paul on 

 the Island of Melita, now the altar-piece at Greenwich Hospital. 

 Besides these works, he painted several others of a different kind, which 

 were very popular : of these the Battle of La Hogue is one of the 

 best ; there is an excellent engraving of it by Woollet ; the same 

 artist engraved his picture of the Death of Wolfe. John Hall also 

 engraved three beautiful plates of Penn treating with the Indians, 

 the Battle of the Boyne, and Cromwell dismissing the Long Parliament. 

 The Battle of the Hogue and the Death of Wolfe are accounted 

 Woollet's masterpieces. The Departure of Regulus, and its com- 

 panion, Hannibal swearing enmity to the Romans, have been scraped 

 in mezzotinto by Valentine Green. 



In 1817 West lost his wife, and he survived her little more than 

 two years; he died at his house in Newman Street, March 11, 1820, 

 and was buried with great pomp in St. Paul's cathedral. Two sons 

 survived him. 



West's works are numerous : he painted or sketched about four 

 hundred pictures, many of which are the largest works that have been 

 executed in this country, and he left about two hundred drawings. 

 He drew well, and many of his works are well conceived and com- 

 posed ; but in colouring he was far from successful, his pictures are 

 too often of a uniform reddish-brown tint ; and in expression he was 

 decidedly deficient in character, and monotonous both in feature and 

 countenance. His great works taken from Classical and Biblical history 

 show considerable academical talent, but not a spark of genius. His 

 best works are his ' Death of General Wolfe,' the ' Battle of La 

 Hogue,' and one or two more of that class. When West was elected 



