![]() Scholarly study of West's artistic achievement is in process. Now at last the scales seem to be tipping the other way. Until recently, West was routinely neglected or actively maligned by writers on English and American art. West fell into disfavor, a fate he shared with other leading academicians from LeBrun to Lord Leighton. West's reputation remained high throughout his life, although he did encounter such criticism as Byron's savage sideswipe at “the flattering, feeble dobard West/ Europe's worst dauber‐, and poor Britain's best.” Subsequently, as the last generation of West's students died out and as taste veered in another direction, Byron's view prevailed. The Archbishop York showed West's “Agrippina Landing at Brundisium With the Ashes of Germanicus” to George ? who in turn commissioned “The Departure of Regulus.” Within a few years West became the king's Painter of Historicat Pictures, and in 1792 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy.Īs an old man West dictated an authorized biography to John Galt, and for more than a century and a half Galt's “Life, Studies and Works of Benjamin West, Esq."(1820) has been the basic work on the arl ist. Attractive in person, moderate in temperament and ostentatiously virtuous, he progressed rapidly up the ladder of patronage. ![]() Taking advantage of an opportunity that came his way in 1760, he went to Italy for several years of study, then proceeded to London, where he settled into his artistic career. In his early years as a portrait painter, he was distinguished from contemporary Colonial American artists (other than Copley) not so much by what he achieved on canvas as by his ambition. West was born near Philadelphia, the son of a tavern‐keeper. And few suffered such a precipitous and, in my opinion, undeserved post‐mortem decline in reputation. Few artists were as long‐lived, productive, influential and professionally ? their own time as West. Samuel I h Morse and many others - made their way to West 's studio ? London for instruction. For more than hall a century a steady stream of young American artists – Charles Willson Peale, Matthew Pratt, John Trumbull, (anima Stuart. Nonetheless, West was also, in many ways, the father of American art. ![]() Unlike them, he never returned to America. ![]() He was perhaps the first great American expatriate, anticipating Henry James and John Singer Sargent by a century.Ī Biography. Ever alert to the primary intellectual and esthetic currents of his day, West as a young artist was in the vanguard of Neu‐Classicism and subsequently shifted gears to become a pioneer Romantic. intelligence, an appealing personality and a gift for one‐upmanship into a long reign as the most powerful and influential figure in English art at the end of the 18th century. FROM a modest start in Colonial America, Benjamin West (1738‐1820) parlayed artistic talent. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |