Benjamin West

Painter

• Born: October 10, 1738
• Birthplace: Springfield, Pennsylvania
• Died: March 11, 1820
• Place of death: London, England

American painter

West helped establish the authenticity and legitimacy of American painting, made significant contributions to both neoclassicism and Romanticism, became a close confidant of King George III, and was instrumental in the founding and success of the Royal Academy in London.

Early Life

Benjamin West, or “the American Raphael,” as he came to be called, was the youngest of ten children born to the innkeeper John West and Sarah Pearson, who lived 10 miles west of Philadelphia. The Wests lived in a community of devout Quakers, but West’s mother had been read out of the meeting (expelled) and, thus, her ten children could not become members of the Society of Friends. When Benjamin was about eight years old, Thomas Penington, a generous Quaker merchant from Philadelphia, was so impressed by the precocious boy’s efforts with his homemade brushes that he presented him with paints, brushes, several prepared canvases, and six engravings by an artist identified only as “Grevling” by West’s earliest biographer, John Galt.

A year later, Penington took Benjamin to Philadelphia and gave him two books that apparently shaped the boy’s thinking about art. One title was John Dryden’s translation of Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy’s De arte graphica (1668; The Art of Painting, 1695), which praised the classical Greeks to the exclusion of all other schools. The second book was by English painter Jonathan Richardson, An Essay of the Theory of Painting (1715). West said these books were “my companions by day, and under my pillow by night.” In Philadelphia, West met his first instructor in the techniques of painting, the writer and painter William Williams, himself only twenty-two years old in 1749. West later credited Williams with inspiring him to become a painter, remarking that Williams “lighted up a fire in my breast which has never been extinguished.”

At the age of eighteen, West was already painting portraits of his neighbors, and his Death of Socrates (1756) earned him an invitation from the provost of the College of Philadelphia to study the classics at the college, tuition free. Although his background proved inadequate for his studies, West benefited from his friendships with some of his talented fellow students, including Francis Hopkinson, a poet and composer. A decisive event in West’s career came when a Philadelphia merchant offered him free passage on a cargo ship bound for Leghorn, Italy.

His first viewings of the old masters in Rome shocked him with their miracles and martyrs, and the attention he received incited a nervous collapse. Recovering quickly, West studied the neoclassical theories of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who advocated painting only the ideal statues of the ancient Greeks, models in which were to be found only the loftiest attributes and virtues. Under the guidance of Winckelmann’s disciple Raphael Mengs, West traveled around Italy copying the works of Rembrandt, Titian, Raphael, and others. His apprenticeship led to two classical paintings, inspired from literature: Cimon and Iphigenia and Angelica and Medora, which won him such acclaim in Italy that after three years in Rome he decided to return to Philadelphia.

Life’s Work

On his father’s advice, however, Benjamin West agreed to visit London before returning to the colonies, and when he arrived in London in August of 1763, already acclaimed as a genius in both America and Italy, he was to settle into an illustrious career that would keep him in England the rest of his life.

He entered his two paintings, Cimon and Iphigenia and Angelica and Medora, in the Society of Artists exhibition of 1764, receiving high praise from all quarters. Thus encouraged, West arranged for his fiancé, Elizabeth Shewell, to leave Philadelphia for permanent residence in England, and they were married on September 2, 1764. They would have two sons, Raphael Lamar and Benjamin, Jr.

In 1765, West exhibited two historical compositions, The Continence of Scipio and Pylades and Orestes Brought as Victims Before Iphigenia, at another Society of Artists exhibition, and in 1766 he became a member and then director of the society. West soon was fortunate in making the acquaintance of Robert Hay Drummond, archbishop of York. When the archbishop observed that the story of Agrippina, as told in the Annals of Tacitus, would be a fine subject for a painting, West produced his first true neoclassical work, Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus (1768). Drummond was so impressed that he praised the painting to King George III, who immediately scheduled an audience for West that resulted in a friendship that endured through the king’s illness.

In addition to suggesting the story of Marcus Atilius Regulus as a subject, the king solicited West’s advice about the dissension then troubling the Society of Artists. The upshot of these events was the rebels’ founding of the Royal Society with the king’s approval and with Sir Joshua Reynolds as president. When The Departure of Regulus from Rome (1769) was completed soon afterward, West was paid œ420 by the king, who insisted the work be exhibited at the Royal Society, thereby validating the new organization and demonstrating royal favor for West.

West’s most famous work, The Death of General Wolfe (1770), defied tradition in several ways. First, it abandoned neoclassical severity and instead took up color, violence, and excitement; and second, and most shockingly, it did not clothe its figures in classical garb and present the scene as a generalization. West had brought to history painting a new realism, with all its details. The king had rejected the idea of modern military clothing, and Reynolds and Drummond warned West about such a dangerous innovation, but all to no effect. When Reynolds and Drummond finally viewed the painting, Reynolds studied it for thirty minutes and then announced to the archbishop that “Mr. West has conquered.” The Death of General Wolfe was a huge success, bought by Lord Grosvenor for œ400. It was followed in 1771-1772 by another highly praised historical work, William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians When He Founded the Province of Pennsylvania in North America.

In 1788 the king came down with the illness that incapacitated him and damaged his relationship with West. When Reynolds died in February of 1792, West succeeded him a month later as president of the Royal Academy, and in the period between 1792 and 1799, he exhibited seventy pictures and continued the experiments with the Romantic subjects that he had begun in 1777 with Saul and the Witch of Endor. Politicking in the academy, combined with several contretemps occasioned by West’s bad judgment, led to his resignation at the end of 1805, but the incompetence of his successor, James Wyatt, prompted the members to return West to office on January 1, 1807. This triumph was capped in 1811 when he showed the allegorical Omnia Vincit Amor and the large Death of Nelson (painted in 1806), as well as his biggest success in this great year, Christ Healing the Sick in the Temple, which was shown separately. For the next few years West busied himself primarily with Christ Rejected by Caiaphas and revisions of Death on the Pale Horse, both of which had admirers as well as critics. West’s wife died in 1814 and West died in 1820, still enjoying the esteem of his colleagues.

Significance

A decade after Benjamin West’s death, criticism turned against him, with John Ruskin, an English critic and artist, remarking that “West is too feeble an artist to permit his designs to be mentioned as pictures at all.” West’s biographer Robert C. Alberts cited 1938 as the year that West’s reputation took a turn for the better with a bicentenary exhibition of his works at the Pennsylvania Museum of Art in Philadelphia and a “discerning” piece on West by James Thomas Flexner in America’s Old Masters (1939). By 1970 the attacks and the praise both ceased, leaving West, in Alberts’s words, “one artist among other artists.”

Two aspects of West’s career stand out. For good or ill, he taught a number of successful artists, including Washington Allston, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Gilbert Stuart. Furthermore, West distinguished himself by accomplishments in two different styles: the neoclassical that he studied under Winckelmann in Rome and his later Romantic masterpieces. The French painter of Romantic subjects Eugéne Delacroix noted in his journal, “Study the sketches of West” and “borrow engravings of Trumbull and West.”

Bibliography

Alberts, Robert C. Benjamin West: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. A standard biography of West, with illustrations, ninety pages of notes, sources, and a bibliography.

ArtCyclopedia. http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/west‗benjamin.html. A useful resource with links to sites, including museums, with West’s paintings. Accessed July, 2005.

Einhorn A., and T. S. Abler. “Tattooed Bodies and Severed Auricles: Images of Native American Body Modification in the Art of Benjamin West.” American Indian Arts Magazine 23, no. 4 (Autumn, 1998): 42-53. An examination of West’s depictions of body art in his images of Native Americans.

Farington, Joseph. The Farington Diary. Edited by James Greig. 8 vols. London: Hutchinson, 1922-1928. A selection from Farington’s voluminous diaries kept over many years. Farington was West’s close confidant, and his diaries are invaluable. Available in various versions.

Flexner, James Thomas. America’s Old Masters: Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, and Gilbert Stuart. New York: Viking Press, 1939. Revised, with sixty-nine illustrations and an appendix on “Benjamin West’s American Neo-Classicism.” Excellent short biographies of its four subjects.

Galt, John. The Life of Benjamin West (1816-1820). Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1960. A facsimile reproduction of Galt’s classic 1820 biography on West, originally titled The Life, Studies, and Works of Benjamin West. Includes an introduction by Nathalia Wright and illustrations.

Von Erffa, Helmut, and Allen Staley. The Paintings of Benjamin West. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986. A large, comprehensive, authoritative, and indispensable work.